


Dead Kisses, Split Knuckles

by weheartscorose



Series: Wrong Side of Riverdale [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017), Riverdale - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Dont hate me I'm usually a bughead shipper, F/M, Jeronica, Jughead x Veronica, Veronica x Jughead, angsty as hell, but this was too angsty for me to give up or drag betty into, dark! Jughead, dark! Veronica, don't read if you hate the ship honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2018-12-19 09:47:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11895144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weheartscorose/pseuds/weheartscorose
Summary: Veronica forces herself out of Jughead's grip and he drops his head, smiling to the earth, oozing smugness. She hates him for it, but she still feels his breath on her. “You think I'm every kind of agony, don't you?” he shouts back at her.She doesn't turn. She knows she shouldn't. She's sixteen but she knows right from wrong; she's been a big girl for a long time now, she's been a big girl since her parents dragged her through hell and back. She thinks about Jughead briefly and the hell he's in, but she pushes those thoughts out quickly. She can't waste a single thought on him, not again. Not ever. Every kind of agony? Yeah, that was him. “Every kind of agony?” she yells back. “Wrong and mistakes, that's the kind you are now.”He chases after her, following behind her only by three steps. She hears a deep, satisfying chuckle from him. “Wrong and mistakes?” he laughs. “But Princess, that's the best kind.”





	1. Agony

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, if you're reading this, I hope you're in for a deep, dark abyss of angst. If not, this is the wrong story for you! Flick the X button if you don't dig angst and you also don't dig Ronnie and Juggie together because boy, you will hate this! Dark! characters, AU and the such.

_ **Chapter One** _

 

She feels like sixteen is supposed to instantly change her. She studies harder, she cheers harder. She tries with Archie. _Harder. Stronger. Purposefully_. She wants to love him harder, stronger and with more purpose because he's good and he's kind and that's the sort of person she needs to be around. _Healthy_ , she knows.

“You just don't understand!” Archie whines at her. “Try to understand where I'm coming from.”

She doesn't understand. All he sees is the bad in people. The vindictive. The punishing. She almost chokes on her soda when she thinks all he can see is the evil. It's stupid and it makes him seem like a little kid. Sixteen; she's trying to grow up a little more – she's trying to feel a little more. She tries to drink malice down with her soda. It's not working. “I'm trying to understand,” she lies. “I feel for your dad.” But she thinks that Fred was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. And was there really links to the Serpents? Or was it more than that?

She hears Jughead choke on his own soda. He bangs his chest and he tries to hide amusement, _not very well_ , she thinks. She knows Jughead doesn't believe she's trying, not in the least.

She glares at him and places a fry in her mouth, chewing noisily. Harshly. Jughead runs over her with his eyes, lips turned up in a cocky smile. She feels his eyes dragging so slowly across her, it's almost physical. Hands on her, nails scratching on her all in one look. _One disgusting look_ , she thinks.

God, she's never wanted to hit someone's grin off their face so badly.

But Archie takes a deep breath and brushes hair out of her eyes, kissing her softly on her forehead and then sweetly on her lips. “Sorry,” he says.

She still has that disgusting, grating gaze on her. Jughead knows it stirs her, God, he knows.

* * *

 

They have books spread over the floor of Betty's room. Veronica feels out of place here when all there is around the room is pink and chiffon. Veronica's lips are deep, dark, wine, bloody purple and her dress is black, it's turtle necked and long sleeved and it matches her Louboutins, brand new from daddy. She finds it funny how he sends her things from the Penthouse in New York, she thinks about sending them back, she even thinks about cutting them in half. But she knows it seems extremely bratty and she doesn't think she has the equipment to do so anyways. She ignores the fact that it's Spring and Betty wears dandelion yellow and soft, rosy pink lips. _It's a sign_ , Veronica believes, _that she's so damn goody goody_.

Betty snaps her fingers in front of Veronica as she flicks through the Darwinian Theory. Veronica doesn't have an interest in it – not in the slightest; not at all – but she knows she needs to do something with her life because Pop's wasn't going to pay all her bills. Not when she's twenty. Not when she wants out of Riverdale. “Ronnie!” Betty whines. It's so obvious that Betty and Archie grew up together, they whine in the exact same style that makes Veronica shiver.

She plasters on a fake smile, the one that's deep, dark, wine, bloody purple and raises an eyebrow. “B?” she replies.

“I need to ask you something, girl to girl,” Betty says.

“Girl to girl,” Veronica answers. “Shoot.”

Betty takes a deep breath and it makes Veronica wonder if Betty and Jughead have gone all the way. It's to be expected, isn't it? That's what boyfriends and girlfriends do. She and Archie had sex a few times and just the thought of it makes Veronica rock on the spot, hopefully unnoticed. She thinks of the way Archie's hands shake so badly, but then they grow bolder. They move like silk, like satin, like the chiffon billowing in Betty's window. She's seen Jughead's hands, his fingers, the way they dance on the keyboard...

And she hates herself for thinking of Jughead.

Betty breathes in again and Veronica almost feels tired of waiting. “Jug's spending way too much time on the Southside and he's not giving it up.”

“Ok...” Veronica says, unsure of what comforting string of words to use. “What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to ask him to stop.”

“Will he stop?” Veronica asks.

“I don't know,” Betty says, sighing. “He needs to stop – he needs to change. He can't keep it up over there, they're not bad people but sometimes they do bad things...”

Veronica can't help but see how sheltered Betty is. _They're not bad people but_ _sometimes_ _they do bad things,_ she repeats in her mind. She finds this extremely ironic and she holds back a snicker. _Oh honey, that's life._ But she knows that the Serpents have given Jughead a family. One that's not the Andrews. One that he actually fits into. She wonders a little more about what it might feel like to fit in.

She keeps listening to Betty. How Jughead comes home to her late at night and he's a few different kinds of blazed and higher than highs. She goes into detail about how he tastes and the feeling of his lips on her neck and how those fingers – the same ones Veronica has been thinking about – feel when they're in her, the softness of his kisses.

Veronica's heart races and she feels it building in the pit of her stomach, so much so that she hisses up cold air in the gap of her teeth and is finding it harder to keep the smile on her face. Hot, blushing and completely wrong.

Betty's Jughead seems all kinds of soft and attentive, gentle and loving, different to the person he hides in his eyes. Veronica imagines hair pulling, blood drawing, skin breaking Jughead. But she could be wrong, because she doesn't really know him at all. But that's what she reads when he looks at her; his eyes on her eyes. His smirk stirring her – planting madness in her.

Veronica can't help but think about all the things Betty wants to change in Jughead. And, naturally, how people never ever fucking change.

* * *

 

“Funny for you to be at Pop's at this time of night,” he says softly. “Raven haired Princesses like yourself shouldn't be lurking around. And here of all places; your boyfriend will have an aneurysm.”

He doesn't look up from his laptop and the contrast between Leather Jacket and Laptop seems out of place and kind of ironic. Veronica sips a chocolate milkshake and if she's being honest, she doesn't want to think about Fred Andrews any more. He's lovely, but he's taken over her life. “I work here. And don't joke about aneurysms.”

He chuckles to himself and goes back to looking at his laptop. “You got a thing about brain bleeds?”

“Doesn't everyone?” she snaps back, unable to believe the nerve of this guy. _Whatever Betty sees in Jughead_ , she thinks, _I'm starting to lose sight of it_. She doesn't remember him being so sour, but she doesn't know much of him at all.

“Pretty late at night, don't you think, Princess?”

She stamps her foot down and places her hands on her hips. He's testing her, she realises that now. “I'm working, Jughead,” she says stiffly as though he doesn't understand.

“Archie told me you don't need to work...”

She rolls her eyes and huffs, tying up her apron at the back. “Didn't think of you as the kind to gossip,” she replies shortly.

“Didn't think of you as the kind to wipe tables, yet, here we are.”

Jughead chews on a piece of chewing gum obnoxiously but Veronica can't ignore it. “Archie doesn't know I'm here doing the night shift; he thinks I only do afternoons.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

He looks at her from the corner of his eyes and his chewing gum flicks out of his mouth before landing on his tongue again. “Because if he did, you wouldn't be here talking to me.”

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “Are you always so damn brooding these days?” she asks, becoming irritated.

He bites his lip and shrugs. “Brooding... Dark? Yeah, dark. I like that.”

“Dark,” she scoffs, reaching for a fry on the table. She eats it, she picks another one. She knows she shouldn't be having so many, Cheer is becoming increasingly stricter but she gives in to oily temptation. She decidedly doesn't give a fuck any more. “How does Betty take to the dark?” she asks him.

He smiles just as dark as he says he is. “Just as well as Archie does,” he laughs.

She doesn't find it funny. It shakes her to the core. She walks away knowing the truth and a whole lot more about Jughead Jones.

* * *

 

“What are you doing in here?” Veronica snaps as she sniffs up courage, she's reapplying formality to her lips.

Jughead throws Southside on the floor in the corner, next to the TV. He seems amused. He always is and it pisses her right off to no end, because how can someone be so irritatingly cool and calm all the time? “Have you been crying?”

She wants to shout. She also wants to kick he TV in and rip Archie's room to shreds. It's a party and it's pumping higher and higher, voices yelling louder and louder and here she is, quietly and utterly, alone. And _yes_ ; yes she has been crying. She stands up from off of Archie's bed, _if I have to join the party_ , she muses, _then I need fresh mascara_.

She wants to lie. Lying to Jughead has become so easy – she assumes it's because he's just as easy a liar as she is – she wants to tell him she hasn't been crying, but she can hardly blame swelling tear ducts on anything else. It's not seasonal. These are tears of hurt. Apparently she's changed and she's not as fun-loving and not so fun to love. _Easy for a sixteen year old to say_ , she knows. _Because who knows love when they're sixteen?_

“I've been crying,” she tells him honestly, trying to summons courage. Wanting to join the party. _Wanting to fucking leave_.

“Why?” he asks.

“Why are you here?” she snaps back.

He nods and continues to walk towards the bed, his eyes are free, his sighs are lost, he's so relaxed and cool calm that she's almost jealous. “I'm tired,” he says. “I want to go to sleep but Archie thinks a frat party might be more fun instead.”

She laughs at his joke and Jughead's eyes turn up when he realises that she found that funny. “You ever smoked a blunt before?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“Want to?” he asks her.

Veronica eyes him as he stands in front of her, hands in his pockets and beanie on the ground with his jacket. She's seen his hair before but it always makes her curious. She wonders if Betty runs fingers through his hair, smells it. She thinks about what it must feel like, soft of course, but it's sticking up on all sides, it's crazy. She's a bit crazy too. His lip is straining between his teeth and they look dry but slick, he's swaying from side to side and he pulls out his hand, cigarette packet out of pocket. “No,” she says. “But I'll take a cigarette.”

He pulls one out and she puts it in her own pocket, saving it for later. For when her mom's asleep and she can sneak outside. “You know what to do with that?”

“Give me a lighter and I will.”

He laughs and runs a hand through his hair. “Sure,” he says. “Anything for you, Princess.”

He chucks the lighter in the air and she catches it, “Thanks.”

“Why were you crying?” he asks her. “Your Rom-Com Male Lead not doing it for you?”

She rubs her eyes and goes to walk past Jughead, her shoulder hitting him in the chest as she tries to leave. “This is no Rom-Com, Jug,” she says, almost hitting the door. “This is worse than a drama.”

She has her hand on the door handle but she's yanked away and her breath hitches in her throat. Callouses on her wrist, breath on her neck. Somewhere between mint and menthol. She doesn't want to turn, but she's spun on her heels, there's a hand on the small of her back; they're bone to bone close, hip to hip, pelvis to pelvis. _Sick fucking callouses on my wrists_ , she knows. _Finger pads on my pulse_. He's slick tongue over his teeth as he looks down on her, even though he's taller, longer, _stronger_ , she grits her teeth and stamps a foot. “Drama, Princess?” he says smugly, moving his hand from her wrists, up her forearm, over shoulder blades, scratching on her neck. “You ever heard of different kinds of agony?”

“Piss off, Jughead,” she snaps, pushing his hand further down her, balancing on the edge of her denim jeans, wanting pressure just there... _Don't piss off,_ she begs in her mind. _Keep right here._

Jughead's eyes are streaming into her, she wonders if she's ever felt something so strongly. It's somewhere between his higher than high and her gin and juice she's been drinking. “There's poison and greed,” he says sugary against her neck.

“Greed,” she replies simply.

She licks her lips because she can almost feel his on hers. Their needs and faces so close together, his nose brushes hers and he inhales her in, purple lipstick almost touching his dry lips. She grips on tighter to his wrist, keeping it on her. She nips quickly at his neck and his eyes shut before he groans and grips onto his hair with his free hand. She lets him go. Only physically, not in her screwed up mind. “Fuck!” he hisses. “I – ah, we...” he doesn't finish and she feels pride swelling in her, deep in her stomach. She made him lose words. She's fucking high about it.

There's anger swirling in her, she detests it, she tastes poison in her throat again. They stand looking at each other, she turns to open the door again. “Poison and greed?” Veronica murmurs as she fakes a smile in the hallway.

Jughead sniggers, he rubs his face with the palms of his dirty hands as he stands in the doorway. “I almost gave in to poison tonight.”

She knows he's right. That's the worst thing about her best friend's boyfriend. He is always right. _So fucking right, I wish_ _he_ _wasn't so wrong._

* * *

 

Archie has become paranoid. _Or,_ Veronica thinks, _Paranoia itself_. She feels like maybe he should go to Chicago, to be closer to his mom. But he doesn't want to leave her. Because he loves her. She loves him too, but she feels like she's suffocating from the inside out.

She clips along the concrete. It's cool air on her skin but she doesn't wear her coat. She thinks that maybe feeling the cold on her skin will make her feel something. She's increasingly feeling distant – Betty is draining; Betty has too many worries for Veronica to think about. And Archie thinks too much about the possibilities of what _might_ happen. And as much as she tries to ignore that feeling that makes guilt pulse through her, it doesn't work. She's changing and she doesn't know how to control it. She's changing, her thoughts are thickening, her mind hazing.

She watches him. All lazy on the side walk with his beanie pulled down and a cocky smirk on his face, eyes rolling, tongue lapping over his bottom lip. She tries to walk past him but she sees in her peripheral vision that his hand snaps out and catches her wrist. She stops in her tracks, she's pulled back and bangs against his chest. “You shouldn't be out walking at this time of the night, Princess...”

He drawls as if it's the most silkiest of words from his mouth. He says _Princess_ as if it's the most easiest thing in the world. Veronica can only taste poison at the back of her mouth when she turns to look at him, all cocky smiles and half-amused stares. “Let me go, Jughead,” she mutters. She clears her throat, she's so aware of how weak she sounds but she goes in for a second round. “Maybe you shouldn't be out walking at this time of the night, what, with that jacket on.”

He snaps his Southside Serpents jacket tighter across his back and she can tell he's irritated by her comment by the way his brow furrows and he smacks his lips. He chucks a cigarette butt on the concrete and stamps it out with his boot. She sniggers to herself, he's wearing red Docs that match the red on his jacket, _how cliché_ , she thinks. “Where are you going?” he asks.

She can smell the tobacco on his breath, hidden under minty fresh but she shakes her head a little, willing him out of her head. “Home.”

He raises an eyebrow, he's intrigued. “Home?”

“Yes, you know, a place in which one can rest their head?”

He stares at her blankly and he doesn't summons an answer for which she is grateful. The more he talks, the more her head spins, her palms go sweaty, guilt pulses through her. She's grateful to not have to submit into these feelings. She doesn't have the energy to work through them. She turns to walk away from him but he snaps out to her wrist again, force tighter on her that she can feel his pulse through her own. He's so close now, she can see the blue of his eyes even here in the dark. She's so close she can almost taste his lips, taste guilt. Taste downright dirty on his smug smirk that she wants to slap off. “Veronica,” he breathes. “Betty doesn't know, if that's what you're wondering.”

She rips her wrist out of his hands, she thinks that if she ignores his words, maybe he never said them. Her face blushes and she hates herself for making it so fucking obvious that she's ashamed. Hell, she's hating herself for it. “I wasn't wondering,” she snaps at him, feeling the heat from his breath dancing on her skin, prickling her. “Thanks for the confirmation. It's not like we did anything, is it?” she asks.

They both look at each other like they can't believe what she's just said. “No,” he says slowly. “I guess not.”

She can't believe that he just lied to her, but she lied first. She wants to laugh out at irony because they're lying point blank to each other, feeding off each tiny, little lie. They didn't do anything but she feels burning rage and blood dripping grips on her wrists made by his hands. She can still taste minty menthol in air. She still feels him in her space but not ever close enough.

She still feels his words choking her. She quickly looks away from him – one more moment would be fatal when she's wondering what the skin on his neck tastes like... “I guess not too,” she says.

She forces herself out of his grip and he drops his head, smiling to the earth, oozing smugness. She hates him for it, but she still feels his breath on her. “You think I'm every kind of agony, don't you?” he shouts back at her.

She doesn't turn. She knows she shouldn't. She's sixteen but she knows right from wrong; she's been a big girl for a long time now, she's been a big girl since her parents dragged her through hell and back. She thinks about Jughead briefly and the hell he's in, but she pushes those thoughts out quickly. She can't waste a single thought on him, not again. Not ever. Every kind of agony? Yeah, that was him. “Every kind of agony?” she yells back. “Wrong and mistakes, that's the kind you are now.”

He chases after her, following behind her only by three steps. She hears a deep, satisfying chuckle from him. “Wrong and mistakes?” he laughs. “But Princess, that's the best kind.”

She keeps walking, pulling up her coat higher on her neck. She hears him stop and twist on the balls of his boots and she tries to keep tears from stinging her eyes, she can't waste mascara. Not on him. Not ever. It's chewing her from the inside, she feels her stomach turn. She knows she's supposed to be the good girl. Coming to Riverdale was supposed to be the start of good Veronica, not downright-still-nasty Veronica. She was supposed to change.

But Veronica was right. People don't change. They just cover all the bad parts up until it starts leeching through again. She keeps walking faster until she can't hear him anymore.

Her mouth turns dry, her nose starts to burn and her eyes break free, a tear falling from her eye. She thinks she's not supposed to feel like this, let alone upset over it. But she can still feel Jughead's teeth on her jaw, still feel his fingers edging into her panties. She still feels him like he's still here with her right now. She feels shit over it. She wants to fucking yell over it.

She speeds up until she's sure he's not around. She sniffs, she wipes her eyes, smudging her make up. Hating herself for it. She pauses, she inhales deeply and turns around.

And even though she feels like she's walked for a million years, she can still see the snake on his back. She loves agony, her flavour of choice right now is _wrong_.

* * *

 

 

Betty sighs out loud and Veronica lifts her head to look at her best friend. _Best friend_ , she runs over in her mind. _The one you're not good to._ “V,” Betty says slowly. “Is it too much to ask Jughead to quit the Serpents?” she asks warily. “Because I feel he's changing.”

Veronica thinks more about changes. She believes no one changes. “Do you think he's changing?”

“I know he is, V,” Betty says. Veronica hears a trace of sadness, and maybe a quiver in her voice as well. She doesn't like seeing Betty sad, but she doesn't know how to comfort her either. She feels guilty for that as well.

“Betty,” Veronica says, quickly trying to come up with something to say. “He might be changing, but he loves you, you know that.”

Betty frowns. “Do I? Or does he love Southside more than me?”

Veronica feels somewhat over this conversation. How can someone love a gang over their lady? “I don't know,” she says gently, rubbing Betty's back. “He's stupid if he does.”

Betty sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “Maybe he was right,” Betty says, letting tears free. “Maybe I'm too girl-next-door and he's from the wrong side of the tracks. Maybe that's what it comes down to. Maybe I'm not enough family for him.”

Veronica keeps whispering kind words into her best friend's ear. She keeps rubbing her, holding her. She feels Betty is so warm in her arms but her arms feel like cold concrete.

And she knows that Jughead isn't searching for a family. He's searching for a feeling, and it's pure filth and bad habits, at least that's what she thinks. But, it's true, she doesn't know him at all. Or maybe she feels she doesn't want to, because she knows she knows him oh so well. She's feeling agony and she almost tastes every different type on her lips.


	2. Taste

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm crazy super excited by the response of the first chapter. For a little, tiny (hated) ship, I feel there is a small band of followers that are clutching on for any Jeronica they can get. Thanks for blessing me with all of your love, I shall give it back in the form of chapters.

_ **Chapter Two** _

 

Sixteen drags on and Veronica hates that seventeen is so close for Archie. As good as Archie is, she grows to learn his second face. A two faced teenaged boy, she shouldn't be so surprised but she is. The second face, the one that isn't so nice and who doesn't look like the Greatest Son Riverdale has ever seen. The second face doesn't play football (though she prefers the body of the one who does), he doesn't play music at A Taste of Riverdale and he sure as hell doesn't have a tolerance for his best friend. _Two faced liar_ , she thinks as she lies on Archie's black and white chequered sheets, kicking her feet in the air.

She feels annoyed at the fact that Archie had been sharp, spiteful words only hours before. He doesn't get why Jughead would fall prey to the Serpents, after what they did to his dad. And he has the audacity to still come over? Still crash on his sofa? _“Wow, what a thick skin”_ he had said _._ She thinks about all the things he said about Jughead, he's better than Southside and what does the Southside have that the Northside doesn't? _A fucking back bone,_ she knows.

The first face, the one he dons every day, is plastered on his face. Because Jughead is lying there too, on the floor with Southside lying on the floor in the corner with mud scuffed Docs. Veronica wonders how the jacket would feel between her fingers, and then quickly, she doesn't wonder anything at all.

If seventeen was close for Archie, it was even closer for Jughead and that's why he was here. She shifts uncomfortably on Archie's bed as he sits next to her and even though Jughead was on the floor, the last time they were in this room together, well, it was something she didn't want to think about with both him and Archie in here. The first face Archie wears is smiling at Jughead, looking all perfection. _Perfectly fucking fake_. “Dude,” Archie starts. “It's almost your birthday, we should have a party.”

Veronica chokes on a laugh as she looks down the floor to where Jughead was sitting because if there were ever a time where she could read Jughead's face so easily, it would have been now. She reads disbelief, irritation and simply pissed off. She smirks, she's satisfied by his frustration with Archie and she knows that her and Jughead both can't believe that Archie would suggest such a thing. Jughead doesn't do parties and if Archie doesn't know that, then he doesn't know Jughead at all.

Jughead shoots her a glare, and she soaks it in, he's radiating his frustration with his best friend and she wants it all. Knowing that Archie is just trying to be a good friend to the guy who is absolutely no good was exactly the kind of reminder she was waiting for. _Archie's so nice_ , she thinks. _He's so good and Jughead's not even grateful.._.

She knows this is stupid. Believing someone to be good all over throwing a birthday party was all kinds of childish and stupid but she feels she needs this. It's all she has. She'll grasp at every pathetic straw just to believe in _good_ again.

“I don't do parties,” Jughead grumbles, flicking blue eyes to Veronica as she lies smug on the bed, dark hair splayed on the pillows.

He pulls on his beanie as Archie reaches for his shoulder, squeezing it and giving him a quick shake just as good friends should – _reassurance_ – she knows this, Archie was always so reassuring. “Couple of drinks, a few presents! It'll be fun!” Archie almost sings. “Ronnie will give you something, won't you, Ronnie?”

Veronica feels burning on her, fire and flames and stinging hot. Archie occupies his next beats with tapping on the Playstation controller and keeping his eyes on the screen; Jughead's eyes drag from Veronica's ankles, over her calves, higher to the swell of her hips, lower to the dip in her thighs. He licks his lips, his laugh sounds malicious as he looks at her; “Sounds like torture,” he says.

Archie is cheery and bright. “It's gonna be fun, bro,” he insists.

Jughead's smile is conceited. She knows he's toying with her, but she doesn't want to accept it. She wonders if his signs and signals are all read wrong. She starts to feel worried that maybe the sign and signals she's reading are simply what she wants to see. She feels bad. She feels downright disgusted by it. “Fine, I'm in,” he says, giving Veronica a wink. “It's my birthday, maybe I'll finally get what I want.”

She knows what he's saying, maybe he'll give in to torture. Maybe he'll get what he wants, maybe he'll get a touch, a taste, a fucking wish come true. Maybe he won't get all pretty and pink and soft, butterfly kisses, tender sighs and breathing as one that Betty gave him last year. Maybe he'll blow out the candles of his cake and finally, there won't be well wishes and bright futures. The candles out and he'll still be standing there in the dark, no happy birthday; that's not what he wants anyway and Veronica knows it. He wants hair pulling, bone snapping, lip pulling. That's what he's been wishing for. _Hah_ , she thinks amusedly. _Wishes, yeah right_. She wishes that the malice would wash over her; that the licking of his lips wasn't so god damn loud in this room. Jughead keeps watching her; eyes still reading every single part of her body and she feels like she knows him a hell of a lot better than before. And he's not good and he blatantly does not give a single fuck, which was just as well, because Veronica feels like she's running out of fucks to give too, and she knows just how much good she has left. She's rapidly running out.

Veronica knows Jughead doesn't want a party, but he's scratching at his skin to get his wish. And it makes her burn and ache at the thought of it.

* * *

 

 

He's waiting for her when she starts her late shift at Pop's. Her mom has told her time and time again that she shouldn't wear heels to work but now, it's been over a year of constant heels and she doesn't know whether or not she knows how to walk without them. But knowing that she'll have to listen to her heels click at eleven at night on the greasy lino just makes her feel a little cheap and, if she must admit, ridiculous.

He's not even inside, he's leaning on the railing of the entrance to Pop's and she wishes she had taken the long way around to the back entrance, slipping in unnoticed. She starts taking off her coat as she makes her way to the steps with him and Southside in the form of leather on his back standing in the way. “I don't think you should be wearing that around here,” she says flatly. She wants to make it short and sweet, she doesn't need to drown in his too many words and sharp quips. Not today. Not ever. She notices him flex his right hand, he cracks his knuckles against the palm of his left and they're split and open, bright red and painfully fresh. She gawks at his hand; he's absolutely cocky about it.

“Princess,” he drawls as she pushes her way past him, shoving the door open. “That's the thrill, isn't it?”

“Looking like an idiot because you're wearing your jacket into Pop's?” she says quickly.

He looks a little lost for words, frowning. “Doing something you shouldn't do,” he says, burning her.

She doesn't give in to him, she continues to the front counter and it's dead, empty and bone chilling cold tonight. She throws her purse under the counter and slams her hands on it, looking up to the boy with the beanie who is always so damn cocky, it's killing her. _Stop feeling_ , she tells herself. _Just_ _let it go_. But she smells pine needles and minty menthol and she can't help but think of all the places he might have been, what he might have been doing. And with whom. She thinks of her best friend tucked up all precious tight in her satin sheets and maybe, just _maybe_ , there would be tears. Betty was a lot of tears these days and unspoken, broken promises. Veronica feels sorry for her, but she hates feeling sorry. Sorry is a level of pathetic that Veronica doesn't want to acknowledge. _Pity_.

She tries to ignore Jughead when he's standing in front of her, scuffing his dirty Docs on the lino and waiting for a rise out of Veronica. He's already blood boiling, tight grips and she's doing a weak job at ignoring him, but she's trying. It's not that easy and with every upturn on the right side of his mouth and the way his fingers tap rhythmically on the counter, she just feels a little more... _s_ _our_ , she thinks, _poison. Downright agony._

“What do you want, Jughead?” she snaps at him, pulling her pen out of her ponytail and tapping it on a notepad she has in her hands. “You're a lucky boy, you'll be my first order for the night.”

Jughead laughs darkly and rubs his eyes before looking up at her as he sits down on the stool in front of her. “I'll take a coffee, black, no sugar.”

“Should you be having coffee?” she asks, gritting her teeth. “This late at night?”

His laughter is scornful and she almost feels embarrassed by it. “Does it look like I'm going to bed any time soon?”

She ignores his question. “Is that it?”

“Until the next hour,” he says coolly. “And then ask me again.”

“What? Are you going to sit in here watching me wipe down tables all night? All that caffeine can't be good for you, Jug.”

His eyes darken and he taps his nails on the counter, tight split knuckles. “I'll take the heart palpitations and a throbbing head any day if I sit up in here,” he says running his teeth over his lip, she watches it pop out. “I can think of worse things that aren't good for me.”

She doesn't say anything, she goes to the coffee machine and pours him one, she contemplates topping it up with cold water, just to get a rise out of _him._ She wants to ask him questions like where has he been all week and what does he do? Does he know that Betty keeps his world locked and away and she has so many words that distract everyone and divert their attention away from him? _Not_ _mine_ , she thinks. And she hates herself for it. Loyalty and dedication and every other proud word runs through her mind when she thinks of Betty and her devotion to Jughead. He doesn't deserve it, Betty is worth a million times more than him. And herself, God, she hates herself.

The night drags on, the three hour shift is short but it feels the longest when she pours Jughead five coffees, all paid for in cash. He's been casual laughs and jokes, quick witted humour and she's been guard let down kind of easy.

She's shutting doors and windows, she's locking them up but she can still hear the steady tapping of Jughead on his laptop and his loud, obnoxious sipping. She tries to reach for the top window but she's too short and she just wants to get home to bed. “Jug,” she says, straining. “Can you help me?”

She hears a stool drag across the floor and it's only then when she notices just how quiet and dull it's been all night. She's had three customers and she's certain that Jack the Fryer has fallen asleep out the back on top of the deep freeze; she can hear his snoring. She keeps reaching for the handle to crank the window shut but she can't and she stamps with frustration. “Come on, Princess, I'll help you,” she hears behind her. Her stomach pulses, her neck creeps up hot. She feels him behind her, she's acutely aware of the shift of breeze she feels under her dress when he brushes it.

He reaches up and turns the crank with ease, she's trapped though and she's trying to steady her breathing, feeling like she's hiked up a hill kind of out of breath. “Thanks,” Veronica says, looking through the window.

“See, I'm not such a bad guy,” he hisses in her ear, she feels his hands on her, resting on her hips and she catches a breath in her throat.

She can try and count every single kind of wrong this was but she doesn't have the time. She wants to turn around, let loose from his grip, unfill the dips in her hips with his hands and run away. She doesn't need nasty right now, she needs good and kind but sound of his voice is agonising. “What kind of agony are you tonight?” she asks him. “Got to be a few different kinds to be rolled up in here all night.”

She hears a breath get caught, deep down, past his throat. _In his fucking soul_ , she thinks. But she feels like she's saturating, drowning, already counting three types of wrong. _Lost, unfaithful and deceptive_. Jughead growls and Veronica feels his finger tips moving, walking up skin, walking along her uniform, nails on her neck, slick lip licking. “Fucked up and desperate,” he answers her.

She can feel his breath on her ear, feels his nose brushing her hair out of the way, his belt buckle pressing into the small of her back, callouses on the edge of her thighs and denim on her skin. She doesn't want it, it's like she's been taken over but she whimpers and feels his stubble on her shoulders, his teeth graze on her pulse, it's throbbing and she thinks she can feel his tongue on it. Pinpointing the pulse of her life source, he's tasting her. She thinks she's never going to be able to take a proper breath again.

His right hand dances on her tail bone, she inhales sharply as she feels his hand on her ass, moving lower to the edge of her dress. His index finger snags on the black lace she's wearing that doesn't feel tight enough and she wants to beg on hands and knees that he'll snap it against her.

Jughead groans and drops his forehead onto her shoulder, she feels the weight of his mind at the same time. “Fuck,” he says deeply. “You make me crazy.”

She doesn't want to move, but she knows she shouldn't stay. She wonders if there are different kinds of guilt, because she feels like she's got all of those happening in her mind too. “Jug...” she says quietly.

He turns her around gently, straightens her collar, pulls Southside tighter across his back and wipes the corner of her mouth before he pulls out a cigarette, she knows it's a ritual and one she wants to partake in. “Lighter, Princess?” he asks as easy as sighing. She just nods, she leads him outside. She thinks she can feel his eyes on her legs.

He flicks the lighter and it sparks up, heating up her face. “Fucked up and desperate,” she murmurs, eyeing the light cigarette before inhaling, letting relief take over, breathing out her mistakes.

His eyes turn black when he looks at her past the haze of smoke, he bites his lip, he takes three deep drags in a desperate row. “Like a fucking drug,” he says poisonously.

She feels half dressed. She feels cold. She feels split in half, erratic and desperate for the next hit.

She wants this so badly, she wants skin tearing, fucked up and desperate, she wants rough hands on her bareback. She feels it in the back of her throat, on the edge of her cuticles, tingle in her finger tips.

She feels it and for once; she feels normal.

 _Who am I kidding_ , she wonders. _I feel fucked up and desperate._

She watches the red of the blood on his split knuckles glow under cheap cigarette embers on the tips. She wonders how he got them, and then quickly doesn't wonder anything at all.

* * *

 

 

Physical education isn't something that she enjoys but it's an easy pass and gives her a chance to talk shit with Kevin and Betty. But Kevin wasn't here today and Betty is soft, muted tones in Veronica's ear. “Have you seen Jughead today?” Betty asks.

Veronica wonders if her eyes are easy to read, if they are, she thinks about just how attentive her best friend is or if she's more invested in trying to read her own boyfriend. “No,” Veronica says slowly, making sure not to meet Betty's eyes. “I haven't.”

Betty frowns and flicks through her phone, getting madder, getting bolder. Swearing in a hush at the screen and Veronica can't help but stay quiet, stretching out her legs. Stretching out her guilt. “He's probably Southside,” Betty says. “Because Southside is more important than school work, apparently,” she adds sarcastically.

Veronica stays quiet through the rest of the lesson but it's easy because Betty does too. Veronica finds herself walking down the corridor late and by herself when she hears a low pitched whistle in front of her.

Jughead's leaning on a locker that's not his with his jacket hanging over his arm and his beanie on, balancing on one leg as his other leg bends at the knee. He looks at his watch as she walks past him but he calls out. “Hey,” he says loudly. “I was leaning over here waiting for you.”

She rolls her eyes and kicks her leg out, twisting to go back to him. _Even though I should leave_ , she thinks. She looks up at the clock at the end of the hall, she knows that there's still hours to go and she also knows she'd rather be anywhere but here.

“Looks like a cool trick,” she says sarcastically through her teeth. “Show me sometime?”

“How about now?” he asks, shrugging.

Veronica takes a deep, much needed breath and closes her eyes. Thinking of excuses, _anything but this_ , she thinks. _Anyone but him_. “Your girlfriend, Jughead,” she says, thickly saying his name. “She's wondering where you are.”

“Anywhere but here,” he says and it makes Veronica pause. She wonders if he can read minds, it was stupid, of course he can. She feels like he constantly reads hers.

She looks at the time, she wants to use it as an excuse but she doesn't want to be here. She wants to go. She wants to get lost, lose time, get out because she feels like she's suffocating. It's so quiet in here, it's like they're alone. She doesn't let herself believe they are though, even thinking about getting caught talking to him makes her heart beat too fast. “Betty's wondering where you are, Jughead.”

He walks up to her, slowly and carefully and smug all in one go. She hesitates but she knows it's not because she doesn't want to give in. It's all about Betty at this point. He tucks his fingers into the waist of her pants, pulling her closer. “She's too good for me,” he says with a sigh, he stares at Veronica's heels, he scratches the waist of her pants with his thumb, she feels his in control when he has a grip on her, she's finding it hard to break free. His knuckles are still red raw and straining as he pulls on her.

She reads his sadness, she can sense it in his blank face, his over-bitten lips, his run through hair but he inhales sharply and looks up at her. “Jughead,” Veronica says sternly. “We shouldn't go.”

“You think I'm all kinds of bad,” he tells her.

“I think you're all kinds of agony.”

He nods with acceptance, hushing in her ear; “Heartache and bad thoughts.”

She knows this is true. _Fucked up bad, needy heartache_ , she knows. _Grip on tighter, breathe on me_. She hides a grin, it's poisonous and bad but she doesn't let it break. Her heart beats triple and conflicted. The bad thoughts, she could cope with. The heartache, she doesn't want to feel.

Veronica looks at the time again and at the same moment, Jughead pulls her closer, feeling his hips on hers. “Ok,” she says.

She can tell he almost doesn't believe her but his lips turn up on the right side and he exhales loudly. “I won't promise you won't regret it,” he tells her. “But you're the only one who's down with bad.”

“Teeth chipping, blood splattering bad? Is that how you do it on the Southside?” she teases.

“What we do on the Southside is exactly that – on the Southside,” he says. “Do you want to go Southside, Princess?”

She almost feels scared. Almost. Not really.

She feels like maybe she's a little Southside too.

* * *

 

She feels like maybe guilt is starting to grow in the depths of her throat. It's planted and sprouted and every breath she takes now is short, sharp and shallow. She had a day off and she laid in whatever trace of sun that's left in the approach to Fall. She painted her nails, she read texts from Betty and she spent time with her mom. She was relaxed but now that's she's in Archie's arms, she's guilty.

He dots kisses all over her, the edge of her jaw, the insides of her wrists, he holds her close and if she listens carefully enough, she can hear the soft murmur of his heart. She thinks it sounds foreign, she's been listening to too much of jagged, rib splitting, high functioning speedy heart beats, it usually sounds thick and slow because it's not just blood in the valves, there's poison and bad things.

Archie's fingers flutter over Veronica's eyes as he reaches to brush hair out of her eyes. “How did I end up with someone as beautiful as you?” he laughs.

Her lips feel heavy and stuck together, she's starting to smell Archie's sweat on her skin and his saliva on her lips, feels his hands creeping down her torso and ripping black lace to the side; _this is it_ , she thinks, _this is what he sees_.

But just as she's been exposed to his fake two faces and how he's all kind and sugar, she knows that he's a greedy boy, a desperate kiss, he wants in with what's the new best thing.

And if she was all beautiful and mysterious and dark featured wonder. Then he was in for a cruel shock.

Because right now, Veronica is so much more than that. She was peeling back layers, she was undressing in her mind. She lets him kiss her stomach, lick her thighs all while thinking about just how far her own greed could take her. She lets him love her; she loves him too.

She has love but she wants in with bad.

* * *

 

He was leaning on Pop's waiting for her to leave, she knows it's him but she doesn't want to meet his eyes, instead she walks down the steps as fast as she can but she's stopped forcefully by his hand on her shoulder; the same one that's glowing angry red. “You're not going to walk on past me, are you Princess?” he laughs.

She sniggers and twists under his grip before reaching up and grabbing his wrist, forcing it so that his knuckles were facing him. “Looks like you've been up to trouble,” she laughs back and she feels good for it.

Veronica feels like a God over it.

Jughead eyes his knuckles and flexes his hand while still in Veronica's grasp. “Depends what you mean by trouble,” he says quietly. “I'd love to know what you class as trouble.”

His words echo through her and she shivers a little. She throws his hand down and she knows exactly what he means. _He's trouble_ , she thinks. _I'm trouble_. “You're seventeen, Jughead,” she snaps flatly. “Go home. Go home to Betty. Stop this.”

“I could say the same thing about you. Go home. Go home to Archie. Cheer the hell up.” He looks down at his kicking boots. “Go hit my party.”

She wants to slap him, god, she does. She hates him a little. She shakes a hell of a lot. She feels she knows him so much more; it's like how she knows herself. “What did you do to split your knuckles?”

“Paid the price for Southside,” he says.

She closes her eyes and ten different things run through her mind about what he could mean about paying the price. She smells his trademark menthol, she feels his fingers on her hips. She reaches out, feebly, shakily and touches the edge of his denim; they're ripped and dirty but she can see where his belt starts and his flannel tied around his hips. She hooks fingers into his flannel and she looks up to his eyes, licking her lips. Almost tasting. She stands on tip toes, her head feels like it's splitting but the way he looks down on her, eyes begging and fingers desperate she can't stop herself. She opens her mouth slowly and he meets her lips with his, groaning into her. Her eyes wide open.

And as soon as she feels his tongue on hers, she feels his dry-chapped lips dancing on soft, purple lips. A sharp breath pulls on her, she's in deep and she's complete. She feels like sick, fucking agony. Veronica shivers and pulls away, glaring at him, beating at his chest, shoving him with sharp nails. She runs her tongue over her mouth out of frustration; _to taste that fucking idiot all over again_ , she corrects. She hates him a little more, she wants to know how he tastes a little more. She wants to fall on the ground with her knees hitting the concrete but she also wants to run away, she wants to pull at him with her teeth but she wants to slap his righteous look straight off.

He flexes his hand again and watches his skin tighten over his knuckles. “You taste just like how I thought you would, Princess.”

“Yeah, you going to tell Betty that, are you?” she hisses.

He chuckles, he swoops in for another quick kiss on her lips and she flinches. “No. Are you?” he challenges.

She looks him dead in the eye, agony. Pure, bad thoughts and fuck ups. “Yeah, maybe I should.”

He licks his lips while rubbing his hands together. “Ain't nothing like a dead kiss, Princess,” he murmurs. “And you're every fucking type of agony I can think of.”

She walks away from Pop's, neon lights in the puddles in the ground and the sound of Southside snapping across Jughead's back. She calculates the time it would take to get from Southside and back before sunrise.

She calculates the pain. Pluses and minuses and even though her head tells her that he's a negative, she feels really fucking positive about him. “Happy birthday,” she says venomously.

“It is now.”

They ride to his birthday in his beat up Chevelle in silence.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, reviewing, kudos, comments, LOVE! I love you all the more for it. Like seriously love you. Love you like Jughead loves the pain and Veronica loves to hate. I'm looking at doing 7 chapters in this.


	3. Free

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. A couple of warnings. Angsty trash and teeny, tiny smut. Also, you might hate me for Betty in this. I apologise in advance.

_**Chapter Three** _

Veronica has Betty in her arms and she's wiping her best friend's tears away with the pad of her thumb. "I wish things weren't so hard," she sniffs. "And then Archie comes over and he's complaining about Jughead too. I don't need his issues on top of mine!"

"I know," Veronica murmurs.

"I'm sorry," Betty cries. "I shouldn't be complaining about Archie to you, you don't need that on your shoulders as well."

Veronica wants to promise Betty that everything will be fine. Jughead's just going through a phase and she'll get her kind, loving boyfriend back. But Veronica doesn't want to lie and she swallows them down, instead turning her attention to the pink on pink on _pink_ in Betty's room, making her feel dirtier than before. She hates this room, she hates _serene_. She's spent too much time in a beat up diner to be sitting amongst all this perfection. "Betty," she whispers. "I think you need to talk to Jughead."

She's being sincere. She really does think her best friend should talk to her boyfriend because maybe, just _maybe_ , if they attempt to be on the same page, he might change and go back to Betty as the boy she used to know. _Who am I kidding?_ She wonders, _he's eighteen, he's not going to change_. She thinks about how true that was, can people change? She did, right?

No, she knows she didn't. She changed back into the person she _truly_ is.

And she's dark, wrong and desperately wanting to tell the truth.

About how Jughead's so far gone and he's gone with _her_.

She kisses Betty on the temple. She loves her girl. She just loves fucked up more.

And she knows, deep down, that people never, _ever_ fucking change.

* * *

The strangest point to Veronica was that Archie hadn't raised his voice. He was mad but he didn't raise his voice or lash out in frustration. He was so calm and soft that it sort of annoyed her. She wished that he would go crazy, throw his hands in the air, beg for her to change. But he didn't. She wants something to happen that would give her an excuse to be mad at him, but it hasn't happened and she doesn't think that it ever will. _You can't be mad at kind_ , she thinks.

Veronica's changed and he's noticed it. She's quieter - she's less involved. Archie thinks it's him, but it isn't. It's her; the old her. The _real_ her. It's coming back and no amount of Riverdale _Pep_ is going to change that. If moving cities hasn't changed her then having a good, decent boyfriend wasn't going to either. She cried in the car, she cried quietly in her room. She cried all the way to the trailer park. Then she cried more, because _why the fuck am I here?_ She asks herself.

She knocks on the door, she sees smoke coming out of the bedroom window and she reaches across the doorstep to the bedroom window and knocks on that too. She hears the bed creak and then the window swings open, a messy dark head popping out. "Princess?" Jughead asks her.

His eyes are high time red and sleepy heavy; she briefly thinks about how it might feel to be on a constant cloud. She sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. Tears fall again but she wills them away, lifting her head to the sky, wishing the tears would somehow go back into their ducts. "Can I come in?" she asks.

He chucks a cigarette butt out of the window and he disappears. The door in front of her starts a series of clicks and it swings open. He was there, no shirt, a deep etched V that gets lost below the buckle of his belt and the start of his jeans, he still has his boots on that look odd and out of place. "What're you doing on this side of the tracks, Veronica?"

She sniffs loudly and tries to suck up strength with it. But she thinks a little too hard, all the changes in her - the hard to deal with. The differences between her and Archie. Jughead lets her in the trailer, it's cold and messy but it's cleaner than the last time she was here. Veronica steps from foot to foot nervously, feeling the tips of her nails. Trying to look everywhere but at _him_. Jughead has an ash tray on the kitchen table, he has his jacket laid up on a mismatched chair, the same one that she pulls up to sit on. "Jug..." she says warily, running her fingers through her hair. Jeans splitting at the knees as she folds them under herself. "I shouldn't be here."

"But naturally you are," he says raising an eyebrow. He offers her a cup of coffee, she wants to laugh at his series of addictions but at least coffee is legal.

She sips at it and it's strong and sweet before Jughead offers her a cigarette to go with it, he's a gentleman in flicking the lighter for her, it lights up the room as she takes a drag. "Do you think about how different you and Archie are now?" she asks him.

He sits down and kicks his boots up onto the table before flicking ash into the ashtray and leaning his head back. "Not really. I used to. But now I don't."

"What happened?" she says weakly. "For you to stop thinking about it?" she says more boldly.

His lips turn up on the right hand side and she swallows loudly, running her eyes over his smiles. He shrugs, she feels he doesn't know the answer. "I thought too much about how different we are," Jughead says lazily. "And it was in every single way, so I didn't have to bother thinking about it anymore, when I was picking at every detail."

She thinks of Archie's happy-go-lucky charm and soft hands on her face. "I think I'm so different to him, I'm losing him."

"And that's why your here?" Jughead asks. Veronica doesn't want him to feel like he's the one she runs to when she's unsure and lost. But she doesn't want to lie to him either, because that's exactly what's been happening. Two years of it. Two years of lost.

"He asked me what he can do to make me happy."

"What can he do?"

"Nothing."

"Right."

They sit in silence, nothing but the crackling of paper from Jughead and his happy high smiles. "You think I'm stupid, don't you?" Veronica asks.

He chuckles and stubs out the roach in the ashtray. "I don't think you're stupid. You're extremely intelligent."

"Then why do you look at me like that?"

Heavy lids, lip licking and knuckle cracking. "Because you're scared of escaping your familiar."

"You are too!" she snaps back. "Betty?"

"Betty..." he says slowly. "I love her so much but I'm hurting her."

"Then stop?"

"Easy for you to say. You know the difference between what's right and what _feels_ right, yeah?"

Veronica purses her lips and folds her arms. She knows all too well. Archie was every kind of right for her but he wasn't what she felt was right. "I know."

He shakes his head. "You know the difference between right and what feels right? Do you know the feeling of hands around your neck? Noose tightening? Air drawing? _Heart fucking crushing_?"

Veronica stares at him as he rubs his eyes, smoke still between his fingers with smoke getting lost in his hair. She thinks about the hands around her neck. They're not soft, soul cleansing. They're filthy and soul sucking. _Air drawing_ , she thinks. _Heart crushing - it's you_. "Do what's right then," she says in a whisper. "It shouldn't feel anything like falling," she orders. "If that's what _feels_ right, then I'd hate to know what feels _wrong_."

"Fuck social norms and what makes people happy."

She wants to, _G_ _od_ , she wants to. She wants to throw arms around him, piss off in the Chavelle and stop at every dirty motel. She wants to be different. She wants to be _her_. "I love your mind, Jug. I wish so many things..."

"I love your mind. And some completely different parts of you too."

She gulps loudly and sips at her coffee to occupy her hands. "Don't say that."

"I can't promise you it'll be perfect. But it would be a hell of a lot easier. But that's love, isn't it? Falling the fuck apart, torn fucking gums. Jughead and Veronica."

She forces indifference into her tone. _Love,_ she thinks, _this isn't love, this is agony._ "It's me with the agony, isn't it? You think I'm the one serving agony."

"Princess, you've been serving me agony since I seen you for the first time in Pop's," he laughs maliciously. "But I've been tearing my knees on the ground chasing after you."

"And what kind am I?" she says, smelling the burning of his blunt, wondering what it would taste like.

"Desperate and mind fucking."

His words cling to her, they feel like they're sewn to her. She feels them so strongly, it's like they're stitched to her skin and she doesn't have anaesthetic.

It feels even more painful when she thinks about Archie and how it's perfect. But Jughead's right. Her best friend's boyfriend is always right. It might not be perfect, but it's a hell of a lot easier being bad.

"Desperate..." she hushes.

"It feels everything like falling," Jughead tells her with such a condescending grin, she can feel his hands on her neck and his eyes on her back.

The she thinks she can hear him again, like he's talking underwater. Like he's speaking from a distance. _Love_ , he echoes in her mind, _love, love, love_.

* * *

The apartment is all warm colours though it's never been so cold. She misses her mom's presence and love but she feels all kinds of baby and little girl like when her mom is home comforting her. And besides, a holiday to New York is not such a big deal.

Jughead stands in the dark with no shirt on and a split, bloodied lip. He hangs off the balcony of her apartment with long arms draped over railing and ash dancing on the wind. He doesn't look up at her and stares down, deep down to the ground with dangerous eyes and a dangerously low voice. "She's leaving," he mumbles.

Veronica's voice gets stuck and suffocates her, wishing she could argue on Betty's behalf. Cursing Jughead for not loving her best friend more. She lies to him; "Is she?" it's easy.

She's splitting at the lips to take him for herself.

She feels guilty in a pulsing kind of way, _I've taken him_ , she knows. _I've taken him all to myself_.

She stands behind him, leaning on the wall of the balcony with nothing but silk on her body. "It isn't right, she shouldn't go -"

"Polly's leaving and she's leaving with her, don't tell me you understand the difference between wrong and right," Jughead spits.

Veronica screws up her face, she sniggers back, she throws her god damn hands in the air because she feels a level of disrespect. "And don't fucking tell me you do!"

"I do!" he replies stupidly.

She rolls her eyes and grips onto his bare shoulder, nails digging into his skin as she whips him around. She sees ruby red on his lip, she sees the deepest of shame in his eyes. "You do not," Veronica corrects. He's eyeing her lips, licking his own. "If you did, then this wouldn't have happened and Betty would be staying here."

"I can't try anymore!"

She stares at him, her eyes feel blank and drained. She sees ruby red pooling on his over bitten lips. Veronica knows that it was a tell tale sign that he's stopped trying. "Southside isn't the be all or end all of the world, Jughead," she drips his name like venom. "You never tried to stop!"

Jughead grips on to the railing tighter, closing his eyes, she knows he's wishing time away but he's defeated and she could tell him in thirty different ways that if he just tried, tried a little _more_ , a little _harder;_ just tried again and again, this wouldn't be happening. But she's talking to a brick wall and she's pounding fists on the brick, but it's not budging. "It's the only place I fit in - the only place that accepts me. It's who I am now..."

She thinks of sugary sweet words she could say, _you're more than that_ , she wants to tell him, _you've got good in you too._ She's not so convinced, she wants to tell him to try again, she wants him to be nice and kind because that's what gets you what you want, right? But she's finding it harder and harder to hide from him. Harder to lie to him. And right now, she was just a fist against brick. She reaches up, touches his split lip. Wonders which obscure bikie named guy gave it to him. "You should try harder, quit the Serpents - do some chasing."

He looks away, his torso ripples with his movements and he flicks his cigarette in the air. "But Princess, that would make too much sense and would be all sorts of too good for me."

* * *

Betty is filled with promises of coming back. She's light laughs and full of _see-you-soon's_ but Veronica doesn't buy it. She hugs her best friend, pulls her closer - they laugh about California not being so far away but Veronica knows distance and if the distance between Riverdale and California was huge, then the distance between Betty and her just being here was bigger. Polly needs help with the twins and Betty was the only one who could go, and besides, the possibilities were endless when they were outside of Riverdale. Veronica knows this. She doesn't believe that Betty does, though.

Veronica waves off her best friend. She feels her heart crack and her brain is throbbing and pulsing with guilt, she feels suffocated. She also feels a hell of a lot lighter to the point where she's almost flying in the breeze. Kevin left, Archie didn't come. He lost his best friend, a lifetime of memories and he couldn't even wave Betty goodbye.

Jughead said his goodbyes, according to Betty. And it was sad and tearful and Betty promised she'd be back. _Promises_ , Veronica thinks. _To be broken_.

Betty left, she smiled even through the tears. Veronica was happy to see her girl smiling, because that's what she deserves - to be free, to be happy.

She turns to walk away from the station when she hears a low pitched whistle. It's too familiar; it's too low. And it was close.

Veronica feels heart heightened tightness. Still too fresh guilt. Jughead walks out of the shadows, it's cliche and typical and ridiculous but she purses lips, hands on hips. Southside stands tall and proud in front of her. "What are you doing?" she asks him.

"Saying goodbye."

She rolls her eyes and turns to walk away but he places tight hands on her hips, pulling her back. "You didn't say goodbye," Veronica snaps, letting hot anger wash through. "You stood in the dark as she drove away."

"Did you want me to get on my hands and knees and beg her to stay?" he hisses, standing taller, darkening his eyes.

She exhales loudly and gives into him weakly. So fucking weakly. "Maybe you should have," she murmurs. "And then none of this would be so hard."

"Hard?" he questions. "Hard is losing yourself, hard is watching the girl who should be every single kind of right for you turn into the one who feels wrong..." he sighs, looking down, running his tongue over his split lip. "I'm scratching at my fucking skin to be by you and it's not right, but it doesn't feel wrong."

Jughead's almost talking against Veronica's skin. She feels him in her skin, the scratching of his skin he speaks of makes her feel like it's her own skin. "I can't believe you sometimes," she hisses.

"Why?" he laughs. "Because you understand me? You know what I'm talking about?" he looks her in the eye, tilting his head to see her. "Because you're scared of what might happen now that we're the only two people in Riverdale?"

"We are not!" she says childishly, looking away.

He pulls her close again, hand on her hip. He winks at her and it's all kinds of irritating and every kind of weakening. "Maybe not. But we're the only two on Southside and face it, Princess," he breathes on her. "You're so far Southside, you can't even see if there's another side."

She ignores him, she's up in flames and walking away.

* * *

Jughead spends even more time at the Diner now and she knows he feels lost. He's lost whatetver trace of direction he had. It left with Betty to California. So she doesn't hound him, she lets him drink as much coffee as he wants and it's a hell of a lot more than it used to be, she's sure of that. Sometimes she feels his eyes dragging on her, she blushes about it. But she kind of likes it.

Her shift drags on just as long and she takes her evening break, somewhere between eleven PM and midnight with a chocolate shake, he tops up a cherry cola and slowly pushes fries towards her as she takes of her apron. She's tired but he gives her small smile that makes her draw back. "Are you ok?" she asks.

He snickers. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Veronica eyes Jughead sideways, stirring her shake slowly with the straw. "You smiled at me."

"Maybe I have more to smile about," he says, shrugging. He pulls Veronica's shake towards him, sipping it, hand staying close to her.

She looks from side to side before reaching over to Jughead's hand, running her nails over scabbed over split knuckles. "Like what?" she asks, reading his smile, soaking in his eyes. Watching his tongue run over his teeth.

"Like freedom," he murmurs, leaning into across the table, she can almost feel him, taste salt on his tongue and cherry sweet on his lips. "Like I don't have to fake anymore."

She thinks about his fake, second face. How maybe it wasn't so bad. Like maybe it was healthier.

* * *

Her phone rings but she doesn't answer because Archie is around. Archie's all kinds of soft whispers and worried about Betty and as much as Veronica answers him with soft words and kind thoughts for her best friend, she feels her phone burning a hole in her jeans.

She waits until she's studied enough about geometry and her mom is happy with what she's made for dinner. She even bitches about her dad for safe measure because that's exactly what her mom wants to hear: (He's good for nothing, he's still caught up in the Penthouse in Manhattan, can you believe him?). She lies on her bed with nothing but her silk slip on, it's not hot. It just makes her feel good.

The first thing Jughead asks is; "What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

"Why?"

"I'm at home," she explains, kicking her legs in the air in her room. "What are you doing?"

"At the trailer - just left Archie's."

"I left there earlier."

He sniggers; "I know," he mutters.

"Why did you call me?"

"I want to get lost," he tells her. "Want to get lost too?"

"How?"

He pauses: "What are you wearing?"

"Are you thinking about it?"

He laughs. "I'm fucking dying for it."

She wants to describe the depth of her navy blue and just how silky satin is on her thighs, but she doesn't; "What are you doing?" she asks him.

"Dying over you."

She tries to block it out because he shouldn't be dying over a girl that isn't his, but she shouldn't be leading on a boy that isn't hers. "What are you wearing?" she asks him instead.

"I want to be wearing nothing."

She bites her lip and she gets up quickly, kicking her bedroom door shut and moving a chair in front of it, not risking anything. She flings herself back onto her bed, heart racing. "Where are you?" she asks quietly.

What she feels is not a thing like falling, it's standing up so straight, her back aches. She thinks about two different lives and she's living both of them. "I'm at the trailer, come here," he orders.

"I can't," she murmurs. "Do something for me?" she asks him.

"Anything."

"Touch yourself."

She can hear rustling on the other end, snapping of leather, clanging of metal and a last drag on a cigarette. "Only if you do you too."

"I'm moving my hands down my thighs," she tells him, feeling stupid. Feeling fucking desperate.

"What are you thinking of, Princess?" he asks. She notes how even over the phone he's stupidly smug and annoying. She wish she could see his face - she knows the conceited look in his eyes even without him there with her.

"I'm thinking of you," she says in a breath, edging her finger into her folds. "I'm touching myself."

She runs nails down her neck, over her breasts, scratching at the surface just like he does. Just like he does to _her_. "Not as good as the real thing, is it?" he asks.

"Never as good as you."

He chuckles but she hears him groan. "You're too good to me."

Veronica knows this isn't true, and he doesn't mean it in the way he should. "Inflating that head a bit, am I?" she asks, slicking herself over her clit.

Jughead's voice gets stuck. "How wet are you for me?"

"Soaking."

She continues rubbing herself. Feeling imaginary callouses on her skin and listening to every sort of nasty thing Jughead can muster and realising just how far she'll go to give into temptation. She tells him to come. He swallows down his desperation, she can hear it over the phone.

She feels constricted breaths, cramping hands, biting her lips so tightly but she's imagining his hands on her, guiding her hips down on his. Wishing he was here. It's like explosions and loud shouting - her staggered breaths fill the room and she can hear his on the other end. "I wish you were on me, I wish I could taste you - get fucking lost," he tells her.

"Me too," she whispers, "Go faster," she orders.

And she edges in two fingers with him on her mind and his voice killing her on the other end. But it's not his voice, it's just his staggered, desperate breaths crackling the receiver. She lets loose with him coming to her name.

"I would kill to be with you right now."

She keeps blank, lying on her back, coming down from her higher than high. "If that were true, you'd already be here by now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really, really want to tell you how much you all mean to me for commenting and kudos. I know this is a hated ship (I literally got so much crap on tumblr for this, I'm not posting updates on tumblr for this anymore because of hate) but I want you to know that every single person who leaves me love on here is singlehandedly keeping me thriving. The angst in this is probably hard to deal with, the ship is uncommon buut I love you all! So that has to count for something, right?


	4. Deep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, these two are just so far gone, I have no excuses. I have NO excuses. I am sorry. They've taken over.  
> Ps: mentions of drugs, slightly smutty.

_**Chapter Four** _

"Let me take you," Jughead murmurs over the phone. "Let me take you, Princess."

Veronica sighs as she pours herself a juice, she checks sideways to make sure her mom isn't listening but even at eighteen years old and deep into the last months of Riverdale High, her mom is listening. _She's always listening_ , Veronica thinks to herself. _Wondering what I'm up to_. Veronica feels bad when she thinks of all the things she's done and her mom isn't aware that her sweet little girl is actually a hell of a lot of sour.

She sips her juice and looks over to her mom sitting on the sofa. Hermione looks from above her magazine and gives her daughter a sweet smile. Veronica groans silently with a grin on, convincing her mother. _Always a sweet smile_ , Veronica reminds herself, _always smooth and sweet_. " _Archie?_ " her mom mouths. Veronica gives her a quick nod to tell her mom it was Archie on the phone before spinning around, hiding her lie with denim shorts tight on her thighs. She looks out of the window, facing away from Hermione. "I know you're there on the other end," Jughead tells her. "I know you want to come with me."

"Where?" she breathes almost silently, checking over her shoulder again to where Hermione's sitting. She wants to communicate with Jughead; eyes, fingertips. Coming loose at the seams with him under her. But all she has is the dead end phone and breathy whispers. It makes her worried. It makes her fucking _godlike_ and in control. "Tell me about where you want to take me..."

"Anywhere," he mutters. She imagines the crackling of his tobacco, the smell of leather. _His fucking hands on my body_ , she remembers. "I'll take the agony and everything when you're with me."

"Don't," she says sternly, sheltering a guilty frown from her mom. "What kind of agony are you today?" she whispers.

He chuckles over the phone and it echoes through her, making her clench her denim thighs closer together, hiding blush from her mother on her cheeks. "Ah, Princess, don't do me like this. _Desperate_ , I'm only desperate. I'd do anything."

"Anything?" she asks him. "You'd be here if you'd do anything..." She gulps down courage and she clears her throat. "You'd be here with me."

"You testing me, Princess? You want to know how far to the wrong side I'd go?"

Veronica plasters on a fake smile that Hermione is more than pleased with. "Betty," she says simply. She laughs bitterly. Hermione buys it. "Archie," she says a little more convincingly.

Veronica almost hears his scowl on the end of the phone but she doesn't wait for it to finish. She clicks the red X, she grips onto her phone so tightly she hears her nails scratch at the screen and she inhales sharply as she looks up to the white ceiling for answers. She shoots back her orange juice like she prays it's something a hell of a lot stronger and she curses herself. _Fuck him_ , she thinks. _Fuck_ _ **me**_.

She turns on her heels and goes to head back out of the kitchen. "Hey!" her mom calls. "Was that Archie?"

Veronica feels like her feet are stuck to the ground and her eyes grow, larger, dilated. Completely messed up. "Yeah," she lies and it's as easy as breathing.

Hermione smiles sweetly again and goes back to her magazine. "You going out with him tonight?"

"Maybe," she says slowly. "Maybe I'll stay over..." she tries, testing the waters.

"Ok," Hermione replies without a blink, without a second thought. Without a trace of her daughter's lying. "Be careful..."

She knows what she means. Be careful, don't do anything stupid. "I will," Veronica replies.

She runs to her room, she slams the door, turns the lock and adds a chair to the front of it because she's being _careful_. She closes her eyes as she unlocks her phone and it could be not even one second gone but she feels fucked off for him taking his time in answering.

"Hello?" Jughead says, cockiness in his throat, poison on his tongue.

She rolls her eyes, she grips onto her hair. "Take me," she mumbles. She moves her hand down her thighs, she's toying with the edge of denim. "I can't stay here."

He's silent on the other end and she feels his silence is booming, it's loud and clashing, scary and moving. "Veronica..." he says. Veronica's name on Jughead's tongue makes her eyes snap open, makes her hand feel heavy on denim. Makes her scared.

"What?" she whispers.

He laughs, it's depthless and questioning. "I have a love for Archie, you know that right."

She thinks about his words; He's Archie's best friend that's all kinds of not good for him. _Archie's girl friend that's all kinds of not good for him,_ she thinks. She swallows loudly, she wants to keep Jughead out of her mind. She wants him gone. She wants him so close she doesn't know where she starts and ends, him in her skin. "I know," she lies.

Jughead hisses over the phone. "I have a love for him, but I love bad more," he chuckles. "Really fucking bad."

"Am I bad?" she asks weakly, stuttering, shakily.

She bites her lip and stops herself from speaking more because she hates him right now and she knows why. God, she knows why. It's because he sounds bad and ruthless. _And exactly like me_ , she knows.

"Maybe," Jughead replies. "I can't tell the difference any more."

* * *

 

Veronica doesn't remember the last time Jughead attended a class. Or the last time she had decided to skip class and stay home. Eighteen is supposed to make or break her and she doesn't feel she's making anything. She's breaking. She's _broken_. Pop's is not big enough for her but she feels she needs to stick up for Pop's. She's been there for years now and even the thought of leaving makes her think of excuses to stay.

Jughead was paying the price more and more for Southside. Betty and California feel so far away from Riverdale that Riverdale was losing all traces of Pep. She Cheers longer and the hours of Cheer leak into her hours at Pop's and Archie was every kind of forceful in the way he approaches everything in his life from Football to music. But not her. She feels he's read every single inch of bad in her. She doesn't think there's much left in her that he hasn't noticed.

Archie just doesn't bring it up. But at the same time, Archie has practically left.

Jughead's skin is bruised, purple, wine, bloody red. Like the lipstick she was wearing, it was an exact match that she finds rather ironic and at the same time, a hideous reminder that she _chose_ bruised, purple, wine bloody red this morning and it was some kind of sick price he paid. He didn't choose it, or if he did, he made the wrong choice. She feels a whole lot of stupid for him if he thinks his body is some kind of sick reminder that he's all tough on the Southside. _But on the inside,_ she thinks, _what is he_? She knows the answer. _Dark, bad and dirty_.

"Don't let Archie see you like this," Veronica mumbles, she's laid on his bare chest of her apartment. Private, mysterious and weak all wrapped in one.

Jughead smirks and cocks an eyebrow. "Archie is already disgusted in me. But I think I'm the least of his worries at the moment."

"You don't want him to be more disgusted in you, do you?" she asks, frowning. "I know he's disgusted in me."

Jughead traces the outline of her lips, snaps his teeth, cracks his knuckles so close to her ears, she almost feels it in her own knuckles. It runs up her vertebrae, it shatters her teeth. "Archie -"

She cuts him off. "What did you do?" she asks him, standing strong in her mind. "What did you do for them to do this to you?"

Veronica traces battered skin, scratches on scabbed-over knuckles, "We're not the worst thing in Riverdale, you know?"

Jughead's strong and smug over it, he's lip licking happy and proud. But Veronica fears what _is_ the worst thing in Riverdale and if it wasn't him, then what was he battling? "What have you been doing?" she whispers over his collarbone, tasting sweat and cigarettes on her tongue, losing fingers in his messy hair.

He sighs deeply, she feels him suck her in - her flesh between his teeth, his fingers snapping cotton on her core. "Keeping the bad away from the good of Riverdale - _for_ the good of Riverdale."

Veronica knows that Jughead is a good liar. He's the best she knows. But she reads straight through him, transparency and visibility and see-through is what she sees. He could tell a million different lies right now in front of her and she'd pick every single one out and strip them bare, he couldn't keep the truth from her any more. _He might be keeping the bad away from the good of Riverdale_ , she thinks, _but he's not keeping himself away from me._

But she thinks a little harder as his teeth grate over her collarbone and she bucks her hips a little harder. She wants dark denim on her, she wants his callouses on her skin, she wants his smirk to engulf her, his pride to overtake her, his conceited laugh to take her in, his cockiness to envelop her. She wants a reason to hate him. She wants his greed to put her off. She just wants it all to change.

But Veronica knows that people don't ever fucking change and she knows she hasn't.

And if she thinks she's the good of Riverdale, then she has another thing coming.

Because in her soul, deep down in the pit of it, she's just as bad as he is.

* * *

 

They lie back on the all white on white sheets that are made of so many thread counts, she doesn't remember the number. At some point, the day dragged on and they remained frozen in time. She gave into his addiction, sharing a blunt that was a surprising amount of perfectly rolled and she observes his fingers, long and lean and it finally makes sense to her how the blunt was rolled; by nimble fingers. Jughead laughs and his head sinks further into the pillow as he passes the blunt to Veronica. She watches smoke twist and twirl in the air, she thinks she can see her worries floating away too, sucking it's way out of the windows open around her in her room. Jughead's eyes squint as he laughs and it makes hers squint too; she laughs with all her teeth, he laughs from down in his stomach. She laughs a little more when he takes the blunt from her, he still has his belt buckled and his boots hanging over the edge of her bed, she traces his deep etched V of his hips as Jughead's stomach sucks in with his laughs.

He closes his eyes as he lets smoke sink him. "If Betty is the Spring, then love, you're the Summer."

"Summer?" she asks, confused but happy, high flight.

"Skin tearing, lip burning, brain charring heat."

"I don't think so," she says gently. "I'm more like the winter."

"Light and refreshing?" he jokes.

They laugh to his joke and she sinks further into feather down.

But she thinks about it a little more.

She thinks of herself as more like the winter chill. _I'm cold, dark and wet_ , she knows.

* * *

 

Eleven PM rolls around all too quickly and the Diner finally slows down for Veronica. She feels like her body kept up but her mind lagged through most of the shift and now she only has one more hour until the end, but it feels like eleven PM is consuming her because Jughead Jones is never late, but he's rocked in at eleven-fifteen.

She occupies the approaching moment in which he saunters through the door with stacking paper cups and folding napkins. He's a low pitched whistle and scuffing his boots on the lino across the Diner that shakes her and irritates her in the exact same fashion; she's not sure which feeling is more dominant. She wonders just how quickly she could slap smug off his face, and just how much it will hurt.

Jughead drags a stool across the floor, jumping up on the foot rails to sit down and creaking the chair. He licks his lips - top first, bottom second - and taps knuckles on the counter when Veronica turns around. She tucks hair strands behind both ears and pulls out her notepad out of habit, not because she's going to use it. She knows Jughead's black with no sugar and fries off by heart, she could serve it up to him with her eyes blindfolded and hands tied behind her back. He eyes her hands as she taps on the notepad, she feels his eyes binding her hands behind her back, teeth dragging across her jaw. Imaginary blindfolds, imaginary hands tied behind her back. It feels like Jughead pops the buttons of her dress with the quick lick of his lips. She thinks about it all and then the door slams, and quickly, she's thinking nothing at all.

Pop's is so quiet, she can hear herself breathing and she's acutely aware of just how dark it is outside and how quiet it is in here. How the silence almost breaks the doors and windows of Diner. "Jug," she says quickly.

"You're mad at me," he replies, leaning back cocky on the back two legs of the stool. "Tell me how mad you are."

She rolls her eyes and she feels that her chest is tightening. _This is too much_ , Veronica thinks to herself, _I'm getting too deep_. "Jug I'm..."

He closes his eyes and she watches him inhale deeply through his flared nostrils, rubbing his hands together, letting off cool and calm and relaxed all in one go that she's trying to snatch up. He's cool and calm and she feels that sometimes, she's nothing more than burning flames and ash in his wind. "I was mad at me," he tells her with closed eyes.

Veronica stands with her pen limp in her fingers and her notepad empty. She's slack jawed, trying to pick it up but she can't help but just stare at Jughead. _He_ _'_ _s mad at himself? For what_ , she wonders, _for being late?_ "Eleven," she says, betraying herself. "You're supposed to be here at eleven."

"Is it a signed contract?"

"No -"

"It feels like it," he tells her. "It feels like I've signed a contract and I was splitting nails on the concrete trying to get here on time, do you know what that feels like?" he asks, looking down at his hands. "Sometimes I feel like I'd do anything for you."

Jughead's blue eyes had never, ever felt as deep to Veronica as they are now. _Drowning_ and deep. She licks her own lips that feel all of a sudden so dry, they would set on fire as she speaks. She closes her own eyes and lets eleven PM wash over her. "You come here at eleven, you have your coffee. You watch me finish up because that's what I like," she says shyly.

Whatever softened Jughead's eyes only a moment ago also washed away and darkened them instead. He growls and it almost seems primal to Veronica, she taps her notepad with a pen occupying her hands, filling the silence in the Diner. "You drive me crazy, you know that? Agonising, you're blind spots and want..."

"What am I right now?" she says, leaning across the counter, lips almost touching, heat reaching his lips but skin barely scratching.

"Want."

"Coffee?" she asks, standing up tall and straightening the collar of her dress. Veronica starts scribbling down Jughead's order on the pad even though she knows it off by heart.

"Twenty," Jughead replies.

She spins on her heels, legs feeling the heat of his gaze. "I know what you want," she tells him.

He sniggers. "You."

Veronica feels light. So light, she could float away. She feels her heart has raced so much, it's finally slowing down. The lump in her throat is swallowed down. She's free, she knows it. And she wants to tell him finally. "Yeah, I want you too."

She watches Jughead's mouth drop and he rubs the back of his neck, she watches red creep up his skin. "Yeah?"

"Jughead," she says as she slides his coffee across the counter. "Don't leave me waiting ever again."

He smiles darkly as he sips caffeine from the cup. "I'd rather punch concrete, Princess," he tells her. "I'd take agony over punishment any day."

She knows she's agony. But she's curious about punishment as well, and how much he must love it.

* * *

 

It's almost become tradition, now that eighteen has stolen her. Veronica's laid up in the trailer at midnight, stinking of oil and vanilla syrup but she's happy laughs and squinted eyes. She moves in the breeze and sways to the music and if he didn't play music she could move to, Veronica believes that she could sing her own songs.

Southside had never felt so far away as it does when she's at the trailer at midnight. Southside gets discarded to the right hand corner, just past the sofa and near the TV. Southside doesn't snap across Jughead's back when they're swaying at midnight. Gentle laughs and nails digging into Jughead's jaw is as far Southside as Veronica will take him when it's time for tradition.

They shared a blunt, it was supposed to be them celebrating the fact that they're still embarrassingly in Riverdale but they instead turned their attention to being sour and nit picking those they were supposed to love the most - their parents. There was no way they could compete.

Jughead pulled her closer on the worn carpet of his trailer, she was soft sighs and tender laughs against his lips but it was all lost on bone hitting bone and grips tight on his wrist when she clung on to him and she felt like maybe his hips weren't close enough to hers. She can tell he's trying to fight it, but if he is, he wasn't trying hard enough and it makes her swallow down a smug grin.

They were breathing as one. Veronica feels that maybe if she doesn't breathe at the exact same time as Jughead, she'll lose herself. But she knows that isn't true, she's not lost. She knows exactly where she is right now.

As she looks into Jughead's eyes, she reads him clearer than she ever has before. His hands on her hips, her buttons undone, his breath on her skin and her nails digging into his hair. They watch. They beat. They _breathe_.

It was so wrong, Veronica knows it, but it's so wrong, it feels every kind of right. Natural wasn't something that she had ever experienced but forced, strained and pressured was what she liked. And as much as she forced him, strained against him, pressured him at high levels, things have never felt as easy as they do now, Veronica knows, God, she knows. Jughead is every single kind of wrong, _he feels like fluid,_ she thinks, _he feels like stone hard, like satin, like water, like ice_. _Fucking blood dripping_ , _when he's with_ _me_.

Veronica watches him closer, he's blazed but attentive, he's watching her but thinking things over, she knows, she can see it. She brushes her lips with his as they sway together. She doesn't want sugary sweet and humming birds. Jughead's all red hot flames and spitfire words when she's whispering all sorts of poison in his ear. She knows she's tightening his noose and she's kicked the block from under him. She wonders just how far he's succumbed to her willingly, or maybe if she's forced him a little. She thinks about it as his hands creep up under her dress and she feels his teeth sink into her shoulder. She closes her eyes; Veronica knows that Jughead is scratching at the dirt on his hands and knees for her, anything to please her. He's getting lost in her; Veronica's forgetting prim and proper and the good that's supposed to come with moving to Riverdale all those years ago, she's gone back to the root of herself. She's just as messed up messy as he is. He's ripped pearls from her neck with his teeth. She's not the same; but no one ever fucking changes.

"You taste like split knuckles against the wall," she tells him as he moves down her shoulder, across her collarbone. She whimpers as Jughead tastes her and she feels his smile on her bones.

He laughs humourlessly as he looks up, eyes darkening. "And you taste like dead kisses," he says against her lips, forcing his tongue inside, snapping cotton against her with long fingers, smoothing out smooth flesh.

Veronica sucks in cold air through her teeth and groans, moving against him, wishing his fingers would edge in deeper. "You never complained before," she says, feeling Jughead slick over her clit. His middle finger and index slide in wetly, she lets a breath escape and he inhales just as she lets go.

Veronica feels Jughead's denim hard and rough on the inside of her thigh. She lets her hand move over it, rubbing up and down as he drops his head onto her shoulder. "Fuck," he says quickly, words stuck in his throat. "It's because I'd fucking drown to feel them again," he says, forcing her hand harder on his cock, closing his eyes.

"You don't have to drown," she says in a breath, feeling his fingers fill her, moving her own hands up her neck, over her breasts, rolling her head.

"Maybe I want to."

"You want to for me?" she says. Jughead's pumping his fingers in and out of her, his palm slapping against her ass. Veronica's eyes roll back. She's barely hanging on.

"Princess," he says with a smirk, slowly edging his fingers almost the entire way out that makes her whimper before putting them back in slowly, running his tongue over her neck. "I'd suffocate under your touch just to get a little lost in you."

"Why don't you lose yourself then?" Veronica asks, looking him in the eye as she rides his hand, scratching at his neck.

Jughead pauses as he licks her lips, licks her neck, slides his fingers in roughly, making the slap louder against her ass. "I'm already so lost, I don't know where I am any more."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. As much as I feel for you guys having to read this and you just all KNOW these guys are feeding off each other, believe it or not, it's pretty intense to write too. I want to send love, light and good vibes to my precious people who leave me kudos and comments. You make me so happy, you make me love you, you make me keep going. I'm forever grateful to you all.


	5. Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Smut. Angst. So much angst.

_**Chapter Five** _

Veronica knows. God, she knows. She knows a lot of things but she wonders at which point did knowing things escape her mind and now she's nothing but erratic shifts in her head. She knows she shouldn't be here. She knows that Jughead is misted highs and cheap, nasty beer from the Whyte Wyrm, she knows she should be disgusted in their lack of checking ID but that's how they do it on the Southside and who was she to judge?

She knows that lying is a dirty trait and she's down right filthy. She knows that Archie thinks she's gone all the way to Manhattan; daddy wants a family weekend and they hadn't been a family in a long time. Disjointed family photos were on display on the mantle at her apartment and her mom was so proud of them. She got them framed especially, _but for what?_ Veronica wonders, _to convince people we're normal?_

Veronica knows that the lying has become as easy a breathing but she feels it's worth it. When she knows that she's got him gripping on to her with the edges of his nails, when he's on his and knees for her, hands together in prayer.

When he's so fucking deep in her she's not sure where Jughead's starting and ending, but he's lost in her.

It's a gravitational pull, it's her rising higher in the sky, she's supreme.

She's Goddess like, she knows.

She shoves down the shakiness in her hands as she knocks on the door. She slicks her tongue across her teeth, she pulls down the skirt she's wearing further down her thighs. She's self conscious she's wanting to show a glimpse.

She clears her throat as Jughead swings the front, faded door of his trailer and he steps back, sniggering soundlessly, bare feet on the cold lino of the trailer and a free hand in his hair. "Princess, come to spend time with the common, huh?"

Veronica purses her lips. She smells higher than high smoke and pine-fresh through the trailer. She watches his body roll as he moves from side to side, no shirt, ripped denim, bare skin on cold lino. "It's almost as if you're not surprised I'm here."

"Something told me that you hadn't left; I didn't feel shift in the make up of Riverdale, so I assumed you hadn't left."

Veronica feels anxious by his answer, mad at herself for not coming up with some quick witted remark, Jughead was so many quick witted remarks, she couldn't keep up with counting them and she blushed at his lop sided smirk. "I didn't know you were so in tune with Riverdale..." she says, looking down at her heels.

"Maybe I'm just in tune with you?"

She scoffs and rolls her eyes, pushing Jughead to the side as she steps through the door and into the trailer, heels clanging on the cold lino. "Yeah, that's the sort of thing they say in fairytales," she mumbles, throwing her coat on a chair.

He follows behind her, she feels him, sees him in her peripheral vision and she knows that if she listens closely enough, she can hear his blood pulsing. "Fairytale, huh?" he says, hooking his fingers into the start of her skirt.

"Yes," she replies sternly. "Exactly what we're _not_ made of."

"Who's to say that?" Jughead asks. "We're the worst kind of fairytale love story out there."

She bites her lip, she spins with his fingers still on her and Veronica clutches onto his shoulders, digging french tips into his shoulder blades, dreaming of looking further down at his stomach, lower; hip bones. She looks anyway. She licks her lips and bats eyelashes. "Love story?" she asks.

She knows, _God_ , she knows she shouldn't ask questions like this. Jughead gives her answers because he's always so confident with every answer under the sun. He knows he's toying her, she can see it in the way his eyes look at her heavy and he sighs out loud and so slowly. Relaxed and cocky in one go. His confidence is booming and she's trying to hide behind purple lips and sharp nails in his skin, knowing that if she has him here, physically under her hands and nails, she has him in control. "Come on, Princess, tell me this isn't lovesick."

Her eyelashes seem heavy on lids, her breath lodged so far deep inside her, it's like she's turning inside out. "You tell me," she says weakly. "You tell me what this is," she says stronger. "Tell me what you think this is."

Jughead's words are lost on the tip of her tongue, he's using his fingers as a distraction, edging on the band of her skirt, another one tracing a pattern on her arm, she's seeing the agony in his eyes and she's naming everyone. _Pain_ , she thinks, _uncertainty_ , _desperate_. "I know what I want it to be," he tells her. "I know that in some sort of fucked up fairytale, it would be all kinds of better than this."

"What's the agony you're wearing today?" she asks, breathing on his lips.

He pulls her closer, dotting his lips along her neck, tasting her. "No agony today, Veronica," he says her name as if it's as easy as breathing. "Can I wear love for you?"

Her heart races and she tries to look everywhere but in his eyes. She loses her thoughts, her words lost too. The feeling of her beating heart is so acute, she doesn't know if it will ever slow. _Love_ , she repeats, _he feels love?_ She wonders if she does too, and then quickly, she doesn't wonder anything at all. She pays love little thought. Because love is over powering and growing larger than two fucked up minds in a trailer. "You love me?" she whispers. But it's not a question. She's commanding and demanding and she _knows_. She knows the answer. She wants it booming in her ears and clashing in her mind and she wants to taste it on her tongue, feel it catching her skin on fire.

She knows she loves Jughead, God, she knows.

"I love you. And it feels like splitting knuckles," he groans against her shoulder, hand moving her skirt up her thighs. "I feel like I've drowned in the last three years."

She wants to tell him how she feels like she's part of the ocean, she's so far drowned. _I'm part of_ _Sweet Water River,_ she thinks, _I breathe underwater._

She doesn't bother with words, she doesn't bother with tender looks, soft gazes, longing stares. She grabs his head tilting it down up from her shoulder and kisses fiercely, burning.

They make it to an unmade bed that's covered in striped sheets. Their clothes pool on the floor before they pool on the bed. Veronica's body is nervous chilled but she feels Jughead hovering above her, stomach and chest heating her up with soft kisses on her jaw. Igniting.

Setting fire to the space between them.

He lowers his weight, Veronica's body as smooth as silk as he slides against her. She rocks and shivers, grinds and burns as close as she can against him but if she thought they were becoming one person in spirit, she felt she couldn't be any further away from him as she is right now. Not even with him skin deep was it close enough in this moment.

She feels soaked all over, heavy in water. His kisses keep her sated and the groan, deep down in the pit of him, makes Veronica more desperate, more dripping. More nails on Jughead's back.

Jughead stretches up and leans back on his knees. She's empty and lost when he pulls away from her and she feels like the breath has been sucked out. She watches him, his cock ready and he closes his eyes, he leans back to lift his head to the ceiling; some metaphorical prayer to God in the trailer roof. Veronica toys with herself as she watches Jughead give a few quick pumps, his muscles tensing. His stomach sucking in.

Veronica opens her mouth for more air as Jughead rubs himself on her core, slicking, sliding, drowning. She notices dusky muted light when her eyes roll back, enjoying the feeling of him on her core. _Getting fucking lost._

Jughead's hand brushes in Veronica's inner thigh, she sucks in icy air as he smoothes his left hand around her hips, he bites his lip so hard it turns white as he pumps with his right. She loses a smirk when Jughead's eyes roll, leaving dents from his nails on her bones. He takes a breath, he edges in slowly, whole body shaking at the same time.

She can't see past his lashes, dusky muted light shadows on his skin but she can still feel him shaking, feel his chest tensing, she feels her body caving but at the same time, arching to be closer to her. _Aching to be closer_. His hand slips between them as he pushes slowly, he spreads soft skin, he rubs in circles. She moans his name. Three times in a row.

Veronica swallows back his name, feeling it in her lungs as he moves, like satin, like silk, he fills her like air; water in the river. She wonders if she's trembling or if she's downright shaking.

She feels like stinging and stretched. She scratches his back to the point that Jughead hisses. The sound of their skin slapping together is amplified when Jughead flips her to the side, slides in from behind and grips Veronica's shoulder as he rides her. Her ass slaps his thighs. Her legs and limbs battle when she forces him onto his back, licks from base to tip and watches his cock twitch.

Jughead strokes and guides himself back into her as she rides him from on top. Her hair is a curtain that falls down her back, she feels his eyes burning into hers as she touches herself, rolling her nipples between her own fingers. He keeps his nails stuck in her hips as she bounces up and down, swearing to the air.

Swearing at God; any one who will fucking listen.

She feels the pressure building, she's not quick enough, his tongue not deep enough, his thrusts not hard enough as she braces herself, hand on his chest, ass slapping and slapping against him.

He pulls her down as she keeps riding deeper, stronger. "Come, baby," he tells her.

She first feels it in the pit of her stomach, spreading across her shoulders, burning and shaking in weak thighs. "I'm coming," she tells him.

He smirks but it's short lived as he vein in his temple almost bursts and the tension in his jaw looks like it's going to split skin. Everything hurts in this moment but it's like a moment in heaven. His shallow breaths are frequent, his nails dug into her bones. His wrist is so tight on her hip that she can see every single pulse in him. "Fuck," he murmurs. It spills out, words on top of words. Every single fuck and groan pouring out as Veronica slips on and off him. Jughead's stomach sinks in and every muscle convulses as his eyes screw shut, jaw slack.

Jughead tries one last time to lift his hips to hers, Veronica drops her head on his shoulder, running her tongue across his lips as he lies inside her. She closes her eyes. She feels complete, sated. _Motherfucking perfect_.

They lie in silence. He has a sheet over his hips and she just lies in him. "Love," she whispers.

He's cocky grins as he hops out of the bed. "You enjoyed a little bad?"

"That wasn't bad," she says, rolling on her back, body dipping and rolling and bare.

"Southside's always a little bad."

"I'd never back down from a little more Southside."

He pulls up his denim as she lies bare in cheap cotton sheets. "Everyone backs down from a snake," he says.

"Not if you're a lion," she smirks back.

He gulps loudly. She lies back in victory and she feels his eyes burning holes in her naked body.

* * *

Veronica knows she shouldn't feel this way, but she does anyway. Mad, annoyed and kind of worried. Worry is the one she shouldn't feel, definitely. Because she shouldn't be worried about Jughead. But she is.

She looks at the time in Pop's; Sabrina was about to knock off and then it'll just be her and Jack the Fryer in here but she's looking forward to it. But it's nearing on ten PM and Jughead still hadn't come in. She wonders if he's asleep and if so, then where?

It's becoming increasingly harder to hide her evening job from Archie. She only works weekend evenings, obviously not wanting to miss out on school and jeopardising her education. Education means a ticket out of Riverdale. She's grateful for Pop's but Pop's was going to keep her in Riverdale forever stinking of malt milkshakes and oil. She'll keep at Pop's until something better comes up. She's eighteen, she still has years to go. She still has time. Archie is nineteen but she feels he's not free and easy, he's worried and caring. She's sick of him worrying about her, she's sick of him saying she can't do certain things because of his worry and she's sick of saying that working at Pop's late at night is going to get her shot. It's not. She trusts everyone at Pop's. She trusts _Pop_.

Jughead was many things but he was never late. She feels like when she sees him, she's going to let loose on him.

She feels like when she sees him, she's going to go crazy.

Just as she starts to feel a little guilty about thinking of Jughead, the door swings open and his boots clunk on the floor, he holds onto his flannel that's draped around his hips and he's grinning, all kinds of higher than high blazed and grins and she wonders just how high his level is.

He slumps down in a booth and she doesn't even look at him. Jughead was all kinds of entitled and she knows it, but she doesn't give him that. She snatches his entitled aura and keeps it for herself; she slams down a coffee on the table of the booth he's in. "You're late," she tells him.

He grates his eyes from her ankle and right up to her thighs, he licks his lips noisily and chuckles to himself. "It's hard to come here undetected," he tells her.

"You don't have to be undetected if you're going to Pop's for a coffee," she says.

He laughs again and runs a hand through his hair. "I'm a little easier to read, Princess," he mumbles. "When I'm busting my fucking skin to be with you." Veronica swallows down a snigger, she keeps down a gulp. She just looks at him, turns on her heels and walks away, her cheeks burning. Her mind fucking raging. "Where are you going?"

She spins on the tip of her heels and starts unravelling her apron. Jughead kicks himself up from the booth and follows her, putting his hands deep in his pockets. "Storeroom."

The look he gives her is so filthy, she squeezes her legs shut. "No one's here?" he asks

Jughead follows her to the storeroom, it's damp and dusty and he pulls her in to kiss her in such a way, it's everything but artistic. He's desperate for as much of her as possible, she's almost drained of herself. "You came late on purpose," she tells him.

"Maybe," he adds, smiling against her lips. His hands travel up her dress, he runs his forefinger on the hem of lace panties. She's self conscious at the amount of liquid pooling from her but he hitches her thighs up and he slams her against the wall.

"Fuck you," she replies.

He sniggers and she knows it's because that's exactly what she wants to do. She forces his two fingers down on her clit, she rides his hand like she's been doing it a hell of a lot more often than she cares to aadmit and she feels a tiny amount of disappointment that she hadn't rode him earlier. He forces his lip between his teeth as he watches her, hard-on straining against his denim.

She tears at his skin, she bites his lips so hard. He bites down on her shoulder to the point where she cries out. She's helped by his fingers and he licks them clean afterwards.

"You were mad," he tells her.

"You weren't here."

"I'm not always gonna be around, Princess."

She knows this is true, and she fucking hates him for it.

She straightens up, tidies her hair and watches Jughead lean against the wall. "I gotta finish up," she tells him.

The look he gives her is pure filth again laced with disbelief. "You're not going to leave me here with a hard-on, are you?" he asks.

She nods. That's exactly what she's going to do. She lifts the back of her dress up as she walks away from him, his hand on stiff denim.

* * *

She sinks into soft earth and she wonders what Chicago's like. She's travelled the world but she has no idea what Chicago even feels like. In the cool air she feels hot, shallow breaths, sweaty and hot. She doesn't doubt that this isn't normal. It isn't right. But she feels a little lost. _Who the hell stays with their High School Sweetheart?_ She thinks. But she knows that she shouldn't think that either, because they weren't even really together anymore, were they?

The bus sounds loud at the depot and she waves as Archie waves back. Her arms feel limp but they also feel like lead. She's eighteen but right now, she feels old. She doesn't know at what point did colour start to drain from her face and she holds back the need to powder her cheeks. It's so self-absorbed and cliche but she's tempted as the bus rolls away. It rolls away and she's still standing here, looking at the empty spot in which the bus sat, she thinks about leaving but she finds it hard. The jock didn't even leave her his Letterman, _it's probably because he has no intentions of coming back,_ she thinks with tears prickling, but she doesn't need to waste more waterproof black on him.

She can hear he loud, sharp inhales of Jughead behind her and she turns to look at him. She has a wavering, brief smile placed on her lips, it's hard with the tremor in her voice but she tries anyway. She needs to show face, she might have lost an almost-boyfriend but Jughead lost a friend. A brother. That's got to hurt too; she knows it. A part of her semi-cracked heart has an aching for Jughead too because he doesn't really have a home, does he? _And that must really hurt._

He's leaning on a lamp post. She feels like sniggering at the fact and rolling her eyes because he looks like a Fifties fuckboy. He doesn't don the beanie anymore, she thinks it's a good idea because it's all kinds of sin to hide that hair under a beanie. _What a waste,_ she thinks. _To hide hair that dishevelled under wraps_. He has his Southside Serpents jacket slung over his right shoulder and he's flicking ash on the pavement with his left. He's a few different kinds of stereotypical. She wants to laugh at her own joke, but she feels too drained to do so.

She looks up to the sky as she stands amongst the smoke. She sighs. She doesn't want to spill a single tear.

"Don't cry for him," Jughead sneers. He runs a hand through his hair, he doesn't even look up from the grass, kicking his boots in the dirt. "He's not crying for you."

She doesn't want to dirty Louboutins, she doesn't want to dirty her knees either so she shifts uncomfortably in her silk dress that, now that she thinks about it, was a stupid choice of dress on her behalf. She takes a deep breath and realises that maybe she hadn't breathed at all in the last fifteen minutes but Jughead has been inhaling poison through it all from a cigarette. "I'm not crying." She knows it sounds stupid. She doesn't care that she sounds like a running nosed brat who gets what she wants. She doesn't care because that's what she was.

"What? Do you think you could have gone with him? Started a fresh, new life?"

"Fuck you, Jones."

His eyes darken and she watches him flick a cigarette butt on the ground, licking his dry lips. "If that's what you want, Lodge."

"Get."

He's breathing so loudly, she can hear when his lungs can't be filled anymore. "He's gone."

"I know."

"Love," Jughead says, rubbing his face with grubby palms. "My love is loving you with all of my cracked heart," he breathes. "It's broken but it's still working."

"I love you pretty," she mumbles. "Pretty little love, but I love you ugly. Punishing."

"Hold my hand," he says, lifting it to hers, touching her fingers lightly with the tips of his. "We can now, fuck three years of weak touches, whispered fuck ups."

She turns to walk away, every step her heels sink into the grass and she feels like pulling one off and aiming it at his head. But instead she keeps walking, biting on to her lip, listening to the sound of Jughead's Serpents jacket snap as he pulls it over his shoulders while he follows her. She hears his zippo lighter spark up again and the crisping of tobacco under it.

Veronica feels like maybe her presence sucks the life out of him. But she knows that if she were not in his presence, he'd have no such thing as a pulse.

But it's over now, they only have each other. And she knows, God, she knows. Who's better for a messed up messy girl than a broken boy, huh?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I ever told you how much I love every single one of you guys who comment and give me kudos? For a teeny, tiny following, you guys have shown me some big, big hearts. I apologise for my depressing chapters, it's hard core. But things are slowly getting there for these angst ridden teens!


	6. Trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what's wrong with me. Two different stories, two new chapters, both kind of no angsty and semi fluffy (Fluffy for me lol) I hope you enjoy our resident most hated Riverdale Ship!

_**Chapter Six** _

Veronica feels like there's a million eyes prickling her skin. That's what she feels, but she knows this isn't true. There's only one pair of bloodshot, heavy high eyes dragging on her skin, popping buttons, licking thighs all in that one look. She can almost taste his tongue with that look, feel it wet, hot, heated on her core. She shudders. _It's that damn look_ , she thinks. The same one that has a lazy feel in them, a lazy smirk on his face. Jughead Jones hides no shame as he rubs his hands together while he watches Veronica post-blunt from Southside. He keeps Southside on his shoulders, even though she knows he shouldn't wear it in here. She realises that her habitual thoughts about the taboo of wearing Southside in the sanctuary that is Pop's is just another useless, wasted thought that she had inherited from Archie. But Archie has been gone a while now and she shouldn't be wasting her thoughts on him anymore. But the more she thinks about Archie, the more her thoughts drag to Jughead. And the more she thinks about Jughead, the more she realises that one thing Jughead doesn't give is a fuck and he still laughs with his head thrown back and his fists slamming the table at jokes even with the weight of Southside on his back. His dead weight glare hangs onto Veronica's burning body as she serves fries to Ethel - _another 11PM date a Pop's_ , she thinks to herself, swinging her hips just to get a rise out of the boy from Southside.

She hurries over to Jughead's booth; she sprays the table with detergent so close to his shake, he pulls it away from her and she leans dangerously low in front of him. Her uniform separates, lace frames her breasts and cool air flows through. Jughead snickers as he runs his tongue over his teeth; he gulps down cherry cola loudly and he clenches his fists loudly, crack, crack, _cracking_ his knuckles that makes Veronica's ears ring. She wonders just how much of her taste he's trying to remember as he licks his teeth again. "You have a problem with me cleaning your table, Jughead?" she asks sweetly but she tastes the malice a little dormant - but still apparent - a little further down her throat.

Jughead gives her a sweet smile back and he bats his lashes, he's playing her game but she knows he's suffering while he grips onto the napkin a little tighter, dropping his guard; his smoky high a little dull right now in front of Veronica. She feels his hot breath close to her chest, it echoes on her neck making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. But she feels his eyes burning the black lace framing her and she feels like she's in control. It makes her smug, it's making her cocky and entitled in the same way she feels he is, learning every one of his tricks.

It makes her fucking _ache_ for him. _Forty more minutes_ , she thinks, _then I can feel him in me,_ _feel his breath a little closer_.

"I have a problem with everything about you, Princess," he says, slowly tracing patterns on the table where she's wiping, she feels as though she can feel those patterns he's tracing. Like he's etching them onto her skin, not tracing them on a oil-filth counter in the middle of Pop's. "You like to punish me, huh?"

He flicks his eyes up to her through dark lashes, he licks his lips like she always likes him to and the little power she had over him from leaning on his table, wiping off oil, it's gone and now she's consistently counting down seconds. She sighs and she stands up straight. Veronica knows Jughead's black coffee and fries off by heart but she pulls out her notepad anyways to keep up appearances. "You're punishing me by being here," she mumbles while tapping her pen on the notepad.

Jughead's blazed eyes darken and he slowly reaches out under the table for Veronica, gently placing pads of his fingers on her thigh, just below her skirt, a hell of a lot higher than her knee. "Why?" he hums, rubbing smooth skin softly, watching Veronica's eyes almost roll back in the middle of Pop's. "You scared we're gonna get caught?" he says slyly. He clears his throat. "You're scared someone's gonna notice and bring it up, huh? Scared everyone will think you lost that Riverdale Pep?"

Veronica can hear that his tone became scarier. He wasn't asking her any questions; _he's mad because he thinks I'm embarrassed to be with him_ , she knows, _he thinks I'm using him._ Veronica stands up straight and scribbles down an order without even asking.

She turns on her heels to walk away but he grabs her hand as it swings back. "I'm going to get your order," she tells him.

"Let me take you home," he says quickly. "Like the gentleman you want - that's what you want, isn't it?"

She shakes her head but her eyes flick around Pop's, looking for someone to find him desperate on metaphorical knees for her. She used to love the control.

Now control eats her alive.

"No..." Veronica says, lost for words. "I don't know."

"I can be kind," he says, laughing. Everything but kind. "I can be clean, proper, prim, loving," he says against her wrist. "I can be the things you want."

"You're everything I fucking want," she hisses. "But that doesn't change how hard this is," she says, ripping her wrist out of his grip.

Jughead sighs and she thinks she sees his face fall. "When are you gonna let this become a little less painful, Princess?" he asks.

Veronica doesn't know the answer.

But she knows this doesn't have to be as hard as it is.

But she also knows this was not how she wanted her life to be.

* * *

Veronica lies in her bed in the middle of Summer. Summer is supposed to be warm, light and bright. But Summer just reminds her of how much she has lost, and how much more she wants. She's still at Pop's, she's still with her mom and Jughead still touches her in such away it makes her feel like her heart is resting on her tongue and his hands burn his prints on her. And Jughead was right all along. She never had any Riverdale Pep to start off with. Jughead is always right and it kills her.

She thinks about how she goes to work at Pop's and wonders if that will be the last time she sees him. She fears Southside.

But she fears that he won't come around for her even more.

Her fear grows when she thinks about how much of himself Jughead's invested in her, she thinks about all that she's invested in him. And she thinks about how he wants to change if it pleases her.

She doesn't want change.

She just doesn't want to pretend anymore.

She weighs up what's easier in her mind. On one hand she thinks it's easier to forget the last three years, move on. Forget that Southside even exists.

And then on the hand that she's leaning on, she wants to go up in flames with Southside. She's in too deep. She wonders if there is even another side of Riverdale at all.

Veronica's phone is heavy in her hands and it's instinct that makes her move, swipes Jughead's name. It's instinct that listens to the phone ringing in her ear. When it's him, Veronica notices that her body functions without a second thought.

"Hello?" he asks first.

Veronica swallows down courage as she reaches down, pulling her silk down her thighs a little further. As if he can see her lying here in her room, see her thighs. Even listening to him on the phone makes her creep up a little hot, makes her skin prick. "Hi," she says weakly.

Veronica can hear Jughead chuckle on the other side. "Sometimes you don't want to know me and then other times you do... And today, baby, it looks like you want to know me."

Jughead has a level of frustration with her, God, she knows it. She can tell by the way he reaches out to touch her but he withdraws back, the way he bites his lip and exhales out loudly. The way his knuckles tighten when he talks to her. In the way he still comes to meet her at Pop's every night even though she's been too distant. Right now, she can hear it over the phone. "It's hard for me..." she says stupidly.

"Veronica," he says so sharply, she feels like slamming down the phone. "We're eighteen. We don't have teenage crushes anymore. Have you ever heard of freedom?"

"I've heard of agony," she says through the phone. She peaks up, she's stronger. "I know that's what _this_ is..."

Jughead scoffs on the other end and she hears something crackle. A desperate cigarette. "It doesn't have to be, Veronica," he begs. "This can be freedom, we can do what we want," he pauses and Veronica listens to his voice crack. "We could get the fuck out of here."

Veronica listens to his dreams, she listens to his promises. _And when has Jughead ever broken a promise?_ she wonders, _never, I'm the one who breaks them_. His promises feel so good when she thinks about them, his dreams make her feel sated and nourished. She wants to follow his dreams.

She just wants to follow him anywhere.

"Jug..."

His voices rises, he's excitable, erratic, passion drips from his voice and Veronica feels it pulse through her blood stream too. "We could go, skip town, we could be whoever the hell we want to be. We can be bad," he says in such a way that Veronica is almost convinced and her smile grows. "We could be so good people will trust us with anything. We could eat out at dirty restaurants; get jobs selling coffees. Open a bar that looks like shit but invest all our money into spending time with our customers. We could do it, you and me..."

Veronica takes a deep breath, trying not to get too lost in his words that make her want to leave right now. "It's not as simple as that, Jughead -"

He groans and it shakes the phone. "It's not as simple as that because you're busting your fists to make this harder than it has to be."

She screws shut her eyes and she doesn't truly know how long she's been lying here with Jughead on the other end. It could be hours. Seconds. Years. He's still here though, his staggered breaths still a constant on the other end. She tries to think of reasons for why she shouldn't go. Her mom. Riverdale. The main one being what would everyone think of her.

She thinks of the reasons why she should go, follow him, _get the fuck out,_ she knows and it all comes down to a small but powerful collection of things that make her heart race.

She'd get out.

She'd move on.

She'd start new.

 _She loves Jughead_.

"Let me think about it," she hushes on the phone. "Let me think, give me time."

He sighs again. "You know, Veronica," he murmurs her name and every time he doesn't call her Princess feels like a nail in the coffin. "I'd wait a hundred years if it meant I could get lost with you."

"You don't have to wait a hundred years..." she whispers.

He laughs, it's humourless and shallow. "Baby, you don't even know how long I've already waited just to get your mind ticking. Even if it's on the other end of a phone."

* * *

Even though he swore he wouldn't bother anymore, Veronica feels relief when she sees him standing outside of Pop's waiting for her. She didn't want to acknowledge the panic that ran through her when he said he wouldn't be there at 11PM and when 11PM rolled around and he wasn't there, she felt something in deep in the pit of her; _pissed off, frustration, fucking agony._

She smiles to herself, it's warm and relieving as she continues ahead of Jughead, she hears his boots clumping against the dirt as he chases after her, "Hey Princess," he calls, "Slow down, baby."

She inhales satisfaction and summer sun is still warm on the air even though it's the middle of the night. Jughead's hands are soft on her shoulders as he reaches out to grab her, he slows her down, she smiles again in the warmth. "You came to get me?" she asks.

He raises an eyebrow and his entitled grin spreads across his face, his hair falling in his eyes. "I'll come get you whenever you like, you say the word."

"You're too nice to me."

"I just want to run away with you," he says shrugging.

Veronica purses her lips and keeps walking but she feels him near her. "Do you?"

"Physically, yeah. Mentally - I already have."

She nods and she tries not to breathe, she's too easy for him to read. Especially when she wants to skip town too. "Mentally I have too."

Veronica can tell Jughead is trying his hardest not to look like he's won some sort of battle, but he's not doing a good job at it. Especially when he pulls at her arm for her to stop, he kisses her with a smile on his lips and she feels him shudder as she edges her tongue in slowly, running it against the smooth of his lips. "You've been thinking a little more about leaving, haven't you, Veronica."

Veronica feels naked when her name spills from his mouth. Sometimes she thinks about every time he's ever called her by her name and more notably, the last time in which he bent her over her kitchen table, fucked her from behind as he called her name through the Apartment she shares with her mom. Jughead pulls away from her soft lips and looks at her, waiting for his answer. "I have," she says honestly. "But it doesn't scare me any less."

"Do I scare you?" he asks.

Veronica sniggers and pinches Jughead's cheek as he kicks his Docs on the concrete. "Not as much as I scare myself."

"You don't trust yourself?"

She kisses him, she spins to walk away. She keeps at a speed that forces Jughead to try and keep up. "Honey," she drips. "If I had even the slightest bit of trust in me, we wouldn't have been doing this for almost four years."

Jughead chuckles deeply as he catches Veronica, tackling her hips, lifting her in the air. She kicks and screams and laughs so much that they're both shaking. "We could chase each other for fifty years and I'd keep going. Trust that we're actually kind of good for each other, the good comes with the bad, right?"

Veronica smiles as she's slung over Jughead's shoulder. He slaps her ass and keep on the path to nowhere in particular. But she does think a little more about the path she could be taking with him, if only she trusted herself a little more.

* * *

She knocks on the door of the trailer to no answer. She bangs it so hard that she thinks it's going to bust down. She keeps going, she uses the toe of her boots, she scratches her nails on the door before reaching over to the bedroom window, slamming her palm against it, dropping her bags at her feet too. "Jug!" she calls. "Open up, Jughead, let me in!"

She hears a bed shift and the sound of Jughead jumping from foot to foo, probably trying to pull up jeans. The trailer creaks as he walks through, the door lock clicking and adjusting as he opens it. "Veronica?" he says, rubbing sleep easy eyes and doing up his jeans with his right hand. "Are you ok?"

She shakes but she seems acutely aware right in the moment. Her bags seem like they're filled with bricks when they're resting on the steps. She wants to throw her arms around him, she wants to turn around, go home and never go back. Jughead's long, lean form lays lazy against the door frame and he looks at Veronica, questioning but with a softness. He flicks his nose with his thumb, he reaches into his pockets for his packet of cigarettes. He flicks the lighter. It feels like an hour since she's been standing here.

The summer warmth steals her, her dress flows in the wind and she's speechless as Jughead inhales his cigarette. "Jughead," she say weakly. "I think I love you," she says strongly.

Jughead's fingers quiver as he puts them to his lips, putting his cigarette in between his dry lips. He reaches out to Veronica's own shaky wrist and pulls her close, she feels his denim on her thighs, his breath on her shoulder. He chucks the cigarette and smooths his fingers through her hair, inhales her in, tastes the skin of her neck, presses soft, dainty, loving kisses on her lips. She was warm, she feels complete, she wonders when exactly did she feel lost because right now in Jughead's arms she's safe and found.

She home and only one half of one, messy fucked up mind.

Jughead's fingers smooth up her, hook into the waistband of lace but he just keeps her close. "I love you too, Veronica."

She shakes her head, it turns dizzy but Jughead steadies her, grabbing her head, easing her mind; _slick fucking callouses on my cheeks_. "I don't care anymore..." she mutters.

His eyes widen and she wonders briefly on the way his smile creeps up on the right hand side. Not cocky, entitled and smug. Genuine and heartbreaking. Wistful and wishful. "Yeah?" he asks.

She nods, she's nodding like a nervous tick, she's trying to reassure him at the same time. She needs to do this. She needs to feel something. She deserves it, God, she knows she does. "It's been three years of wondering, Jughead," she breathes him in, the smell of him being higher than high, mint chewing gum that he stomps with his Docs and cheap cigarettes. She quickly thinks of a rundown apartment in New York and using her waitressing skills at some cheap cafe. "We wondered what it would be like, to be more than what we are. We wondered what it was like to stop faking -" she rips at his hair a little with her fingers lost in tresses, "- we wondered what it was like to have a freedom we thought we were too fucked up to deserve but you were right."

Jughead runs his swelling, bottom lip along her jaw but Veronica pulls his hair back so he looks her in the eye. Love lost, love lust and blinded. "What was I right about?" he asks, "Tell me, tell me what I was right about because sometimes it feels like the only right is you..."

He speaks sugary but she knows he's thinking she's a kind of wrong so deep, he's lost. "You were right," she replies. "It's now or never."

Jughead kisses her softly on the tip of the nose. "Now or never," he repeats in prayer.

Veronica clings onto his shoulders, she digs nails into his skin and speaks with his taste on her tongue. "Let's go," she murmurs, "Let's get out of here, let's go to New York. Let's go, take me," she says tougher and louder.

Jughead steps back. He raises his eyebrows but nods, pulling her hips closer to his by the edge of lace. "I'll take you wherever you want to go, Princess," he replies. "I'll fucking go to hell."

"We don't have to do agony anymore, freedom, right?" she asks. 

He smiles to her, brushing her cheeks again. "Our only agony right now Princess is learning to fucking trust."

She thinks about Hell. But she knows that New York is enough to blend into a new life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love you all for showing me love. Love you for being one (1) out of 4 Jeronica shippers! Let's band together, yeah?


	7. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've hit the end of my angsty ridden forbidden (cough-hated-cough) ship story!

_**Chapter Seven** _

Veronica doesn't meet his eyes as they lie on the mattress in the warm apartment. She stares blankly at the roof that Jughead has promised he'd paint but he hasn't. _And he won't_ , she thinks. But it doesn't turn her sour, she thinks he's sweet instead. Because Jughead Jones is a hell of a lot of sugary sweet when it comes to the things that matters.

Veronica sits up and crosses her legs, she looks at the long limbed boy who's eyes are a lot older than he actually is. His scuffed Docs are still on and his ripped, denim jeans hang on his hip bones with the zipper undone. No shirt. She looks at his scruffy hair, his bloodshot eyes, his hands behind his head, the trail of hair that starts at his belly button and gets a little lost beyond the band of his underwear. He laughs a little too loudly for their quiet little apartment. The one that smells too much like bleach because before it smelled like bleach, it smelt like dust. The apartment that was filled with next to nothing; the mattress Jughead promised they'd save for a frame to put it on, the drawers with no handles, the TV that had the buzzing green line through the centre and the mismatched wine glasses.

"You're a kind of agony today, Veronica," Jughead says with sleepy shut eyes. "Tell me what's wrong..."

"No I'm not," she replies snappily. "There's nothing wrong."

"You're not?" he questions. Veronica can tell Jughead doesn't believe her in the slightest. And though she's high-hearted happy and lighter than light rested, she still thinks of all the things they left behind. All the things her mom said to her when she left. And all the chains they fucking broke when they left Riverdale.

"I'm not," she says weakly.

"Scared," he tells her. "You're the scared kind of agony, Princess," he mumbles on the floor. "Tell me you're not. You're not afraid of love, are you?" he smirks.

She doesn't answer. Jughead Jones was always right. He was righteous and cocky and always fucking correct, Veronica knows. She ponders on things. Noose tightening, chain breaking, freedom mixed with ties keeping her down. The smell of Sweet Water River in the Summer and the difference that the cold makes to it's scent in the Winter. The way that Jughead Jones was never, ever supposed be part of her because Southside was so far away from the life Veronica lived. But now, he's so far in her, she's forgotten where she starts and he ends. Betty Cooper, her best friend, flickers in her thoughts. And then, suddenly, Veronica has no thoughts at all.

"Jughead?" she almost whispers. He doesn't budge. He doesn't open his eyes and Veronica bites her lip, clenches her fist and reaches out to the opening of his jeans, yanking at the material. "Jughead!" she hisses.

"Hmmm," he replies, opening one lazy eyelid, smirking at Veronica's apparent anger. She hates herself because even after all this time, he still gets a rise out of her. The tightening in her chest and fists, the annoyance in her rolled eyes. She hates him smug, she loves him deeper than deep.

She inhales sharply and walks her hand up his stomach, watching his stomach suck in and his jaw tighten at the same time. "Did you ever think we'd be more than this?"

Veronica pays attention to the way Jughead's eyes flick around the room. There was a small bedroom, empty with peeling wallpaper that's all bright yellow and Sixties Hypnotic. It's empty because that bedframe that Jughead has promised to save for isn't here; _he'll get there_ , she promises herself. Because Veronica knows that Jughead doesn't back down from a promise. God she knows. Red, heavy, sleep desperate eyes hang on the bathroom door with the shower in it that doesn't have a shower curtain and even after two months of living off a freedom induced high, the guilt lingers, it's in her veins. And she drifts into the state that's only ever occupied by the thought of how Jughead slams into her as he holds her against the wall of the shower that doesn't have the shower curtain. She blushes while he clears his throat, adjusting his jeans...

Empty Chinese boxes sit on the crate they've decorated with a tablecloth and their TV buzzes loud like it always does when it's been on too long. Veronica still smiles to it, it's shitty and it's going to die, but it's theirs. She waits for Jughead's answer with oxygen stuck in her throat and a thumping heart. Because they might have run away, Jughead might look at her with a hunger that he's had since they were sixteen. But she's still unsure, scared and a hell of a lot of agony.

She lies back down next to him, letting her body sink into the mattress, letting her shoulders relax against the sheet, letting Jughead's breath dance along her collarbone as he sighs her name on her skin, laying on his side with open denim on her bare thigh. "Do I wonder if I'd ever be more than this?" he sniggers, eyelashes piercing her as his dry lips taste her.

She exhales loudly, fingers tangled in Jughead's hair. _What does he feel?_ She wonders loudly in her mind. _Does he want this?_ She asks herself because deep down, deep in the pit of her, this is all she's ever wanted.

Freedom.

"Yes," she says strongly as she pulls his head back by the hair so she can see the cocky smile on Jughead's lips. "Have you ever wondered?"

Jughead laughs darkly, licking his lips, snapping the elastic in her panties against her skin. "Princess," he drawls. "It's been years since I've ever thought I'd be anything more than part of you."

At some point she loses herself. She rides him from on top with her hands scarily close to his throat, the cheap TV buzzing so loud the neighbours would hear, on the second hand mattress they had bought when they rolled into this strange town. When Jughead grips onto Veronica's hips and releases himself into her, she calls his name, louder, harder, _stronger_. Just another thing the neighbours would be able to hear too.

* * *

Without the weight of Southside on his shoulders, Veronica thinks that Jughead is almost angelic like. As much as Jughead was good at faking things, he was a master of deception now that they're in the new city, Veronica knows. _A boy that dark_ , she thinks, _can never actually be light_. But he was a soft as petals, bright pinks and reds, he whispers gently in her ear in the new coffee shop she works in, a barista whose speciality is a vanilla latte, double shot. And all those handy tips from Good Ol' Pop's had worked in her favour, because even though Veronica had never been great at an actual coffee machine, she was a fast learner. And now she's the best at her job. He gives an easy look to the other girls in the shop. Veronica watches each girl drag their eyes from Jughead's feet to his messy hair and to the lip he keeps between his teeth when he holds Veronica in his arms. He kisses her gently on the cheek, laughing at all the right times and especially when Sarah the tea girl says; _"It's like you've rolled out of a motorcycle gang with all that leather..."_ Jughead's more than appropriate laughs makes Veronica's legs a little weak while she's wrapped in that leather and her throat needs clearing.

He's sweet, petal kisses as he says goodbye, dropping off Veronica's lunch. But his sweet, petal words turn dark, sinful, twisted. _Too fucking deep,_ she thinks as she struggles to keep her smile to herself. _Too fucking much_.

She knows Jughead can feel her shaking, feel her nails digging into his forearm and his smug, cocky smile is more than entitled before he lets her go. "Wait until you get home, Princess," he murmurs in her ear. "So I can fuck you senseless..."

He lets go of her, she's barely finding her footing and her face is so hot, she feels sweat beads on her forehead. She finally clears her throats, straightens her apron. But Veronica Lodge doesn't back down from a battle, she knows. She starts wars.

"Oh, Jughead!" she calls out after him.

Jughead spins on his heels, raising an eyebrow, shoving hands in his pockets. "Yeah?"

She makes it to him, pushing her weight on his shoulders, tip toeing to get up to his ear which makes Veronica's anger pulse because she's trying to prove a point but his height itself was domineering. She gets up to his ear and hisses; "If you want to live, you'll stop whispering bad things in my ear at work, ok?"

Jughead laughs humourlessly, malice dripping from his tongue. "I've died twenty times over for you, Veronica. And I know you're a little more than the bad I am."

She stamps her foot, glaring. "I'll show you bad."

"You're every kind of bad for me," Jughead replies with a wink. He cracks the knuckles of his right hand against the palm of his left, runs his tongue over his lips. Veronica can see him begging for her with his eyes. Jughead walks out, flicking his Zippo lighter with long fingers as he lights up a cigarette. Veronica waves him goodbye and turns back to the counter.

Sarah the tea girl gives Veronica a small smile in which she returns, mind hazing, heart slowing as she gets back to work. "You two are so cute, have you known each other long before moving here?"

Veronica thinks of a series of both lies and truths. _No, we haven't known each other long,_ she wants to say. Then the truth becomes dominant. _We've known each other longer than we care to admit_ , she thinks. Sarah waits for an answer and time ticks so slowly as Veronica thinks of both the truth and the lies. "We've known each other since High School," Veronica says truthfully.

"Were you High School Sweethearts?" she asks Veronica.

Veronica holds back a snicker, she looks down at frothing milk and wipes a hand on her apron, smiling only on the right hand side. "Something like that."

Sarah continues with her work and Veronica wipes down tables. Veronica knows that Sweetheart doesn't match the ballad of her and Jughead. It's fucked up in her blood vessels, it's dark in the lining of her heart. It's every kind of agony she can think of that bought them to here.

And those petals he was whispering in her ear, well, they fucking turned into thorns.

* * *

She's brushing her teeth on the six month anniversary of their move. Veronica ignores calls from her mom. Jughead advises her that she shouldn't.

Veronica advises Jughead that he doesn't tell her what to do.

They both have a day off in which Veronica wants to spend her time reading a trashy magazine that she splurged on but Jughead's wearing cotton boxer shorts and has become a domesticated-homemaker with baking dry muffins that he's dumped on the worn, fluro green kitchen bench top and a cigarette is hanging from his mouth. He flicks ash from the kitchen window before whistling the tune to some Alice in Chains song that he likes.

Veronica tries to concentrate on the magazine but she counts down the last six months in milestones and wonders when she'll start riding the next wave of hard times that usually come. _They always come,_ she thinks. _When I decide to change for the better_. Veronica has been trying to swallow down the constant feeling of fear in the back of her throat. She doesn't believe that happiness lasts forever, it hasn't in the past for her and she sure as hell doesn't think it's going to change now.

She thinks about change and how nothing ever fucking changes.

Jughead keeps whistling, tea towel shoved into the pocket of his favourite ripped jeans, sparking his third cigarette in a row as Veronica pulls her knees up to her chest. She wonders if rocking would be appropriate? Or would it just make her look a little unhinged. It's a dark fucking feeling, but one that she'd be more scared of losing, she's lived with it for so long.

Jughead's head is thrown back, praying to the god in the ceiling as he breathes out his smoke, letting it spread across the roof of their old, damaged apartment. His eyes widen when he looks at her, she wants to look away. "You ok, Princess?" he asks.

She wants to argue with him, tell him to go, tell him to take her back to Riverdale in the beat up Chevelle he drives her to work in because no; no she's not ok and things never are. All she's ever known is swallowing down her feelings, the feeling of being fucking _wrong_ and she knows nothing ever works out in the end.

So why should this?

Why should this be so easy?

She calculates in her mind quickly how many agonies she can count in this one moment in time, the one where her and Jughead live together and they don't give any number of fucks to the people that maybe they should. _Selfish_. That was the agony she is right now. _Selfish_.

"Fuck off, Jones," she whispers.

It's louder than she thought.

She fucking shouted.

Jughead's eyebrows knit together and the flannel that hangs off his shoulders that isn't buttoned up flies behind him as he makes his way to the ripped, two seater sofa that Veronica sits on with her knees to her chest and arms wrapped around. "What's wrong?" he asks.

Amongst the many calculations in her head, Veronica avoids calculating how to tell Jughead that she's scared and she's not ok. She bites her lip so hard she almost tastes blood, her nails dig into the sides of her knees, the area is turning hot. And the fear?

The fear is eating her whole.

Jughead flexes scarred knuckles in front of them both before slipping his hands beneath hers, tearing her from herself, lifting clenched fists to his lips, kissing each knuckle covering his own eyes with her hands. "Don't," she murmurs.

But he keeps her hands close. "Is there something wrong?" he asks her.

She wants to kick, scream, yell and tell him that this has to be fake. This was never supposed to work out, this was all supposed to be temporary.

Or the fact that it shouldn't have ever got this far. She misses Riverdale.

But she still fucking despises the place.

She lets tears fall from her eyes but she wipes them off quickly along with her pride, letting it seep back into her through her fingertips. "You ever think that maybe we don't deserve this, Jug?" she asks.

She reads him through the look in his eyes. She reads fear, agony, selfishness and downright dirty. She knows he feels it too; how did the two most fucked up people in Riverdale end up so happy? She knows it's not deserved, but they claimed it for themselves anyways. His own hands shake on her body, his eyes flicker, on and off, because he's unsure. "If we didn't deserve this, do you think God would have given this to us?"

He laughs, it's malicious and dark and Veronica knows that Jughead is anything but a religious person. The irony of it all spills out with his nervous laugh and is etched into her when his palms run over her thighs.

"Maybe he didn't?" Veronica says with a sniff, gaining back her composure, hating herself for being so weak. "Maybe it wasn't God? Maybe it was the Devil?"

Veronica gives Jughead a smile when she lifts her head from resting on her knees and Jughead thinks on it, nodding. "The Devil was good when he gave me you."

His hands coast, as Veronica laughs. "That was really soft, you know that?"

Jughead chuckles, wrapping her up in his arms on the worn two seater. "See what you do to me, Veronica. You make me fucking crazy."

She feels his laugh shake through her. She briefly wonders if maybe she does deserve to be happy. Maybe this is how it's supposed to be now. And then suddenly, she doesn't think anything at all when she falls asleep in Jughead's arms.

* * *

It's unseasonably cold when she walks home from the late night shift from the cafe. Her heels click along the sidewalk and she had replied to Jughead saying that she was going to be fifteen minutes late but now that she thinks on it, it was probably closer to twenty-five.

"Veronica? Ronnie!" she hears from behind her.

Veronica never used to believe in fate. Or destiny. Or any of those things. To her, destiny was the feeling of their over worn, second hand mattress fitting perfectly on the bedframe that Jughead had saved for even if it took over a year. Fate was all of the clothes fitting in the new drawers she had got for free from the cafe owner. Or the new wallpaper that they had chosen together that had ended up in a very frustrated Veronica and a cocky Jughead who had to be knocked down a few notches. There wasn't anything Jughead wouldn't do on his hands and knees that day when she was leaning against the wall of their kitchen.

She doesn't know at what point did her blood stop pumping and her brain stopped reacting. Archie Andrews never used to be that tall, but was it possible for him to grow even more? It had been three years but he was both the same, but different. His hair was longer, she wondered what it would feel like to run her fingers through that hair and his smile warmed up the night that stung against her lips and whipped her cheeks. She smiled back. Archie laughed.

"Ronnie," he says, bending down to hug her. "What the hell are you doing here?" he asks.

She thinks of awkward strings of words to say but she doesn't know which ones to use. "I-ah," she starts. "Wow! Archie," she says with her own chuckle. "I just can't believe you're here!"

He fills her in quickly, he's there for work. He loves Chicago. He's in an on-again-off-again relationship with some girl who does music too... and does she hear from Jug? Jughead's name gets stuck on her tongue. "Ah, yeah," she replies. "I do." She avoids that subject well.

"Do you want to get a drink?" Archie asks her, holding her hand the same way he used to when they were sixteen and she was searching for everything that was good for her. Not something that was wrong but felt right.

His eyes still hold something for her, or maybe she was reading too much into it. She clings on to his soft smile and soft hands; caring heart. But she blinks and keeps her eyes shut for a little too long and her heart aches for home, her mind throbs for Chinese and movies on the new bed.

She wants to head home to every kind of bad.

She shakes her head and gives Archie a hug. "It was so good to see you, Arch," she says with a deep breath. "I've really missed you."

She can see he looks confused. "Catch up one day, yeah? You have my number."

She kisses his cheek and heads off, not letting him know that they were right in front of her apartment.

She gets to the front door, the one where you have to shake the key in the lock and kick the left hand corner but it swings open she drops her coat on the floor with her hand bag and notices Jughead on floor. The old second hand mattress on the floor too. "Why is this in here?" she asks. "When we have a bedframe now?"

Jughead shrugs but opens his arms to her, she falls on the mattress, sheets flying. "Why does it matter, Princess?" he replies. "This is our shit, we can do what we want."

She lies on the floor with him, staring a the TV with the green line through the middle. Wondering if this was ever agony, or if she had made it harder than it had to be.

He relaxes with her in his arms. "Are we agony or what today?"

"No," she murmurs against him. "Just love."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say thank you to the small band of people who take the time out to read and comment/review/kudos this fic. Though Jeronica is both highly hated and also unpopular, you guys definitely showed me a level of love that would rival a lot of other ships! I thank you all soo, sooo much. I wouldn't be able to tell you how much I love you all!

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me love. I'm desperate for it. Also, not sure if I shall continue this or not but you can let me know if I should...?


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